Category: Roseberry Topping
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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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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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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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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…
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A view from today’s constitutional
No prizes for guessing that it was taken the summit of Roseberry looking north towards Pinchinthorp. A lovely cold winter’s day, with a smattering of overnight snow. This was actually my second ascent of Roseberry — here’s a photo from the same spot on that first climb: So no prizes available today but a certain…
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“Lay pretty long in bed, and then rose, leaving my wife desirous to sleep, …
“… having sat up till four this morning seeing her mayds make mince-pies.” 356 years ago, the Pepyses may have had a lie-in, but we were up and about on Little Roseberry taking in the fresh air and blue skies. Samuel Pepys went on to complete his diary entry:— “I to church, where our parson…
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Nanny Newgill, the Broughton Witch
On a drizzly Cold Moor this morning I was reminded of one of Richard Blakeborough’s tales about a witch who lived at Broughton. That’s Great Broughton on the Cleveland plain below, just left of centre. The peak of Roseberry Topping is on the skyline just right of centre. Blakeborough’s story appeared in the Northern Weekly…
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With the cloud hiding most signs of modernity — a notable exception being the well-worn paths — I can’t help thinking that this a timeless view
It is certainly a view the young James Cook would have recognised while he lived with his family at Aireyholme Farm. Cook of course would go on to achieve fame with his navigational exploits in the Pacific, beginning with his trip to Tahiti to observe of the Transit of Venus. He left England aboard the…
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There is nothing as exhilerating as being out in the snow
Well ok, it was only a smattering, a ‘greymin‘, barely enough to cover the rocks on this Bronze Age tumulus on Great Ayton Moor. ” ‘Twas frost and thro leet wid a o’ greymin snaw“. On my walk up Roseberry through Newton Wood, the feathery pruinescence of the dead bracken fonds meant I was not…
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The talus of sandstone boulders at the foot of Roseberry Topping resulting from the landslip that occured in 1912
A scene of rocky confusion. ‘Talus’ is a strange word. It’s a word I actually find uncomfortable to use, long past its sell-by date. In this context it means the slope of rock debris but an alternative meaning is an anklebone. Each derives from different Latin words. Until 1830 talus was more often referred to…