Category: North York Moors
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Abandoned sandstone quarry near Turkey Nab
A pair of cairns have been constructed on the nab itself, where once a gibbet stood, last used so I understand, in 1729, when Willam Parkinson was hung there in chains. My notes say that Parkinson was tried at York assizes for the murder of a Scottish drover at Great Broughton. He was brought back…
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A poem wot I rote
There have been much enthusiasm recently about AI (artificial intelligence) generated text using companies such as ChatGPT. Always on the lookout for a lazy opportunity, I thought I would give it a go and downloaded the app. So to accompany today’s photo of the summerhouse below Roseberry Topping I thought I would get the AI…
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Long Causeway
A strange name for a farmstead, perhaps a reference to the post medieval trackway that can be discerned by a faint holloway parallel to the dry-stone wall in the photo. I once read that large earthfast boulders in a wall is an indication that the wall is of some antiquity. The farm was a beneficiary…
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Boundary stone on Stanghow Moor
Exploring hob country, the area of moorland south-east of Guisborough. This early 19th-century boundary stone marks an old parish boundary between Guisborough and Stanghow. It is about half way between Hob on the Hill and Hob Cross, which names denote a connection with those mischievious sprites that are supposedly the descendants of prehistoric inhabitants. The…
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A lesson for us all: beware of the tallyman
A few scattered hawthorn trees mark the vestiges of an old hedgerow. Little Roseberry and Black Bank in the distance. The massive credit facility needed by our former Prime Minister has been making the headlines recently. A lifestyle that demands this amount of money ‘on tick‘ is incomprehensible to me. At the turn of the…
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On this day in 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor, the head of the German government
A short wander up Cliff Rigg this, reflecting on happenings 90 years ago today, Then, the elderly Weimar President, Paul von Hindenburg, was persuaded by the conservative elite to appoint Hitler as chancellor, the head of the German government. An appointment that was entirely legal and constitutional. At the same time, one of those conservative elite,…
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Proposal to explode a nuke under the North York Moors
Cracking sunrise this morning as I was running over Simon Howe Rigg, south of Goathland. Just the tetrahedron of R.A.F. Fylingdales breaking the horizon. I recalled the old golf balls of R.A.F. Fylingdales — built in the early 60s — now replaced by the tetrahedron. It’s not quite the same. Yesterday I ventured onto Wheeldale…
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Roseberry Directissimo
The main path up Roseberry Topping, stairway into the cloud. Deteriorating badly. The path was improved in 1993, when a helicopter was used to airlift 200 tonnes of stone from the lane past Aireyholme Farm. The zig-zag path was then pitched using a “technique used since Roman times” and the verges revegetated. The work was…
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Bransdale — a dire forecast but it turned out alright
With flashes of sunshine from the blue-bores sweeping down the dale. Back at Barkers Plantation in Bransdale, the National Trust property in the heart of the North York Moors. But approaching the woodland from a different direction so a view I’ve never seen before. The house at the bottom of the photo is named Wind…
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I ought not allow this day to pass without mentioning Rabbie Burns, born on this day in 1759 in Ayeshire
But I won’t quote the National Bard of Scotland’s poem most associated with Burns Night and recited worldwide on this day: ‘Address to a Haggis‘. Instead a poem in which Burns reflects on the treatment of nature and the fortunes ‘Of Mice and Men’, a line later immortalised in the title of John Steinbeck’s 1937…