Category: North York Moors
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Aireyholme Lane
Approaching the site of the Roseberry Ironstone Mine on the south-east flank of Roseberry Topping. Late afternoon, finally spring feels like it has arrived and the fields are beginning to drying out. The buildings, clad in corrugated steel, were located in the field on the left, with the bale of hay. Their concrete bases are…
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Little Fryup Dale
High Lane, linking the neat fields of the eastern side of Little Fryup Dale escaped designation as a Public Bridleway. The dry stone walls probably date from the late 18th/early 19th centuries when the fields would have been created under the Parliamentary Enclosure Acts. On the west side of Heads, that separates the dales of…
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St. Mary’s Well
I have called this St. Mary’s Well. It is a name referred to by the archaeologist Roland Close in his report on his excavation of the Iron Age huts on Percy Rigg. Unfortunately, I have not been able to read his report published before the days of the internet. A copy has been requested but…
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Roseberry Plant Bed
On this day, in 1769, William Smith was born in Oxfordshire. In later life, he moved to Scarborough and became known as the Father of Geology. But I jump too far ahead. He became a canal engineer and thus became very familiar with the rocks encountered in constructing cuttings for canals in the Midlands and…
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Staindale Beck
On what must be the warmest day of the year. Sunshine and the peaceful bubbling of the stream. A lotic moment at Low Staindale in Dalby Forest, time out while helping with some fencing for the National Trust. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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The vernal equinox
Today is the vernal or spring equinox, the astronomical start of spring when the length of day and night are equal. The word equinox, in fact, comes from the Latin meaning equal night. Astronomically, the equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator, an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator, which…
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The Postman’s Path into Baysdale
Taken from the old postman’s path, part of the route walked daily by the Kildale postman, which, according to Cedric Anthony’s book Glimpses of Kildale History, was the longest round in the country. For many years Derrick Dale was the postman. He lived in a cottage near the railway station. Originally mail was sorted at…
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Grýlukerti
An exploration of the rocks of Cook’s Crags on Easby Moor. And lots of icicles in the overhangs. The Icelandic word for icicle is grýlukerti which literally translates as Grýla’s candle. Grýla was an ogress who lived a cave in the mountains with her thirteen boys. At Christmas, she would come down to the villages…
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Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig ort
St Patrick’s Day and a reminder needed that spring is on its way. The average date for the first swallow being spotted off the southern coast is 29th March. In the North-East, it will probably be a couple of weeks later. So in 3 weeks time, we could be seeing our first swallows arriving after…
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Snow, bracken and bluebells
Beneath the wet, dirty snow, beneath last year’s carpet of dead bracken, the bluebells remind us that spring is on its way. Open Space Web-Map builder Code