Category: North York Moors
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South End, Great Fryup Dale
On Glaisdale Rigg looking across a sea of cloud to the whaleback hill known as Heads which separates the two Fryup Dales, Great and Little. The sun is shining on the South End of Heads. Temperature or cloud inversions offer the most spectacular atmospheric conditions. The dense cold air of the valley is capped by…
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St. Thomas’s Day
December 20th, the feast of St. Thomas, or Doubting Thomas as he is sometimes referred because he doubted Jesus’s resurrection, was a bit of a special day for Yorkshire folk. The Rev. Atkinson in the 19th-century wrote of the custom of children going a-Thomassing, that is visiting houses on this day and asking for Thomas’s…
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Dibble Bridge
Spanning the Esk, a mile west of Castleton is the 18th century Dibble Bridge. Built of local sandstone, the bridge has been designated a Grade II listing “building” by Historic England. The name, however, indicates a much older crossing of the river for the etymologists tell us the name has Old Engilsh roots. Deop means…
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The Cheese Stone
The Cheese Stone is a group of sandstone boulders on the ridge between Grain Beck and Black Beck, two tributaries of Baysdale Beck. One must be the Cheese Stone but which it is, is open to debate. There are at least two contenders. The stones do add some interest on an otherwise featureless moorland that…
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Belman Bank Quarry
Recent tree felling in Guisborough Woods, ok maybe not that recent, might be a couple of years now, have exposed the outline of the large alum quarry at Belman Bank south of Guisborough. For many years any evidence of the quarry has been lost under the canopy of commercial forestry. A couple of weeks ago…
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Airy Holme Lane
Finally it snew overnight. No, that’s not a typo, just the archaic past tense of the word snow. Just as knew and know, and grew and grow. I love to resurrect these lost words. The snow has transformed this photo of Airy Holme Lane, the Public Bridleway that runs between Aireyholme Farm and the col…
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Cod Beck Reservoir
A bitterly cold morning but, disappointingly, no snow. No wind too so not a ripple on Cod Beck Reservoir. Perfect reflections. Taken just about where the old farmstead of Wildgoose Nest would have stood before Cod Beck was flooded in the early 1950s. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Black Howes, Moorsholm Moor
A skith of snow turn Black Howes on Moorsholm Moor negative. A skith being the name for light covering of snow. The Bronze Age burial mound is one of a pair of round barrows which I last visited in the spring when they really were black but the black of the charred remains of recently…
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Dressed stones on Bridestones Moor
A bit of a mystery. Bridestones Moor is unmanaged diverse heather moorland, a National Trust property, bisected by a steep griff or valley along the edge of which are the Bridestones, calcareous sandstone towers weathered into surreal shapes. There is no other rock exposed on the moor, no scattered boulders. Limestone was quarried in a…
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Scot Crags
Scot Crags in Scugdale, although probably better known as Barker’s Crags which are strictly the crags beyond the next dry stone wall. All told including Stoney Wicks almost a kilometre of hard sandstone crags, very popular with serious rock athletes and beginner groups alike. Something for everyone. And today, December 6, is the Feast of…