Category: North York Moors

  • Grain Slack

    Grain Slack

    Discovered a new area of moorland today. Thompson’s Rigg, part of the National Trust’s Blakey Topping property. Heather dominates the rigg, hiding the prehistoric field system, cairnfield and hollow ways. Across Grain Slack, a diverse shallow valley is Allerston High Moor, also Trust land. In the distance, the commercial plantations of Langdale Forest have been…

  • White Hill

    White Hill

    White Hill, or perhaps better known as Hasty Bank, although I think that name actually refers to the Bilsdale side. Anyway the site of the 1872 landslip which wiped out the old Stokesley to Bilsdale road. I won’t repeat the history here, just refer you to my earlier post. Looking down on the Cleveland plain…

  • Crepuscular rays shining on Yarm

    Crepuscular rays shining on Yarm

    I’d banked on a good sunset but the rain came, should have read the forecast. Still somewhere was in the sun. Yarm I reckon. The wind farm is between Hilton and Seamer. Taken from the northwestern flank of Roseberry. Crepuscular comes from the Latin crepusculum, which means twilight, the time when these sun rays beaming…

  • Lealholm Bridge

    Lealholm Bridge

    Early 19th-century stone bridge spanning the River Esk at the picturesque village of Lealholm. Grade II listed, it must have replaced an earlier bridge for The Board Inn on the opposite is a former coaching inn dating from 1742 when the building was known as Lealholm Bridge House. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • An undercliff, Great Fryup Dale

    An undercliff, Great Fryup Dale

    I posted a photo of Great Fryup Dale last year when I wrote about my fascination for an area at the head of the valley called The Hills. A chaotic jumble of knolls, ridges and depressions. The same question returned. What caused this landscape? Quarrying? Alum extraction? Canon J.C. Atkinson, the vicar of Danby, also…

  • Larners Lake

    Larners Lake

    This artificial fishing lake seemed to have appeared overnight but realistically it would have been sometime in the 80s when I was not resident in Great Ayton. It takes its name from Larners Hill, a ridge with a bridleway eventually leading up to Easby Moor and Captain Cook’s Monument. For many years I regularly used…

  • Lonsdale Slack

    Lonsdale Slack

    Friluftsliv, a Norwegian philosophy embracing spending time connecting with nature, literally translates as “free air life”. Just being outdoors in the forests and mountains. Even the dense uninspiring commercial forestry plantation on Coate Moor can seem magical given the right lighting. Like this morning, a few minutes after sunrise. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

  • Roseberry’s eastern crag

    Roseberry’s eastern crag

    Rendered in black and white this photo contrasts the lichen-covered rocks of Roseberry’s eastern crag. Lichens are everywhere yet are often overlooked. They thrive in a variety of environments, are long-lived with a very slow growth rate but are sensitive to moisture, pH, minerals and air quality. They are actually two organisms, a fungus and…

  • Cod Beck

    Cod Beck

    Construction work by the National Trust at Cod Beck. The aim is to create a circular wheelchair accessible path around the reservoir. Yorkshire Water has upgraded the existing paths and gates and plan to install a new bridge just beyond the far side of the tree left of centre. Rangers and volunteers of the National…

  • Armouth Wath

    Armouth Wath

    When Baysdale Abbey was sold in 1803, the sale included a “supposed very considerable” coalmine. This would have been at Armouth Wath at the head of Baysdale, one of the furthest tributaries of the River Esk, although mining activity by this time would have been on the decline having reached its peak in the 18th…