Category: North York Moors
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The Purple Patch: Why Farmers Are Falling for a Foreign Flower
A field of Phacelia, blooming lavender-blue, with Capt. Cook’s Monument keeping watch on the skyline behind it. One local farmer explained the appeal on Facebook: “The blue/purple flowers in several of our fields this year are Phacelia. A fast growing, beautiful cover crop that attracts pollinators with its nectar rich lavender blue flowers; adds a…
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Westerdale: Two Dales, One Village, No Pub
The name Westerdale suggests it’s the westerly dale in the Esk valley, with the river starting life as springs called Esklets high on the moor. But the dale forks in two. One arm mixes wooded ravines with bare moorland and old common land, now grazed by sheep and cattle. This one, drained by Tower Beck,…
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Fat Betty: The North York Moors’ Most Deceptively Named Landmark
Standing at the head of Rosedale, on the loneliest stretch of Danby Moor, sits a stone that has outlived every joke made about it, and at least one attempted burglary. Fat Betty is nothing grander than a squat wheelhead cross, its shaft long gone, its base whitewashed like a garden gnome given ideas above its…
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Why Historical Truth Matters
A view looking down Farndale, moments before an unforecasted downpour caught me completely off guard. Typical. But I cannot let this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence pass without a word, mind you, because someone once said “where the US leads, Britain follows.” A worrying thought, that. America is caught in a proper tug…
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Roseberry’s Summerhouse: What Was It For? Nobody Quite Knows
A while has passed since I last posted a photo of Roseberry’s summerhouse. I call it a summerhouse, though nobody agrees on what this odd building was for. The National Park have stuck a plaque on it calling it a shooting box. Fine, except a sketch by George Cruit puts the building there in 1788,…
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Iburndale: The Industrial Revolution Missed Its Stop
I must admit I can’t recall ever passing through Iburndale — certainly not on a bike, and that hill is steep. Sleights many times of course, but Iburndale feels such a contiguous part of Sleights, containing that same 20th-century housing favoured by retirees and the commuters of Whitby. The old village, once clustered around the…
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Barnaby Toll Road: Even the Dead Paid to Pass
A gravel track on a baking summer day runs through lush green verges high with cow parsley and nettles. To the left stands Toll Cottage, an 18th-century stone building with a terracotta pantile roof and a weather vane on its gable. Before tarmac, before bypasses, before anyone thought roads should be free, there was Barnard’s…
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The Field That Keeps Its Secret
This never fails to make me smile. That teardrop island and the stubby little peninsula — where the farmer at Aireyholme cuts around rather than through — mark where the ground has quietly given up. They sit at the outer edge of the old Roseberry Mine ironstone workings. The miners used what they called “bord…
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A Northern Harr Brings Fine Weather From Far
I tend to avoid Roseberry on Sunday mornings but those that made the effort today might have witnessed two seasons colliding. The summit sat in sunshine. Below, the vale of Guisborough disappeared under a slow grey tide rolling in off the North Sea — a sea fret, and it has been catching the Yorkshire coast…
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Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie
A quiet family walk round Duncombe Park, or so we hoped. We picked the one weekend a mega motorcycle festival decided to roar through, and so much for peace and birdsong. I wonder what Helmsley Castle made of the scene. Perched on a rocky outcrop above the River Rye, its shattered east tower looming over…