Category: Roseberry Topping
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Another sunny morning, but a tad windy on the Topping
âTrace in the sky the painter’s brush â Then winds around you soon will rushâ The last few days have dawned with blue skies and a smattering of cirrus clouds. High wispy cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals and usually portend an approaching depression from the west and the associated deterioration of the weather.…
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Roseberry
A day spent with the National Trust cutting back the growing bracken on footpaths. This particular path is the old bridleway up Roseberry, possibly used to take Victorian tourists up the Topping â although I haven’t any evidence to support this. The bridleway is little used now, but has to be cleared because it’s a…
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Bridle Gill Road
A view of the north side of Little Roseberry. There is no indication of a footpath on the 1856 Ordnance Survey Six-inch map, nor the parallel gulleys. Instead a ‘Bridle Road‘ is shown, initially following this route, then taking a right angle, contouring around the nose and ascending on the north side. This Bridle Road…
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Newly painted Roseberry trig point
Roseberry’s trig point received a fresh coat of brillant white this morning. A clean canvas for a new generation of graffiti artists. How long until the first arrives?
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‘Ohensberg’
The bridleway between Aireyholme Farm and Hutton village, passing through the col on Roseberry Common, is referred to as ‘the great road of Ohensberg‘ in one of the foundation charters of Guisborough Priory of about 1120. The original is in medieval Latin of course but nevertheless it sounds as if it was a main route…
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In search of Regency Graffiti
I came across a letter the other day in the Yorkshire Gazette dated 1st December 1821. There are some words which were frustratingly unreadable because of the binding â I’ve included these as [?]: Sir, â As your columns are often [with] classical notices, it cannot be doubted that [you will] readily admit the following…
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A shower on t’moors
Every poet since Chaucer has waxed lyrically about April showers: Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; and foretold of flowery times for May. But I don’t think many had in mind a blizzard.
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Black Bank
The eastern edge of Newton Moor, still showing signs of the devastation left after felling some twenty years or so ago. I wonder how long will the old tree stumps take to decay. This sandstone outcrop is shown as a quarry on the 1856 O.S. map. But no access track is shown, nor is there…
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Witches’ Knickers
A dreich day, witness my photo of Roseberry not quite smothered by mist. ‘Witches’ Knickers’ is an Irish epithet for the poly bags that attach themselves to shrubs and trees, and barbed wire as here on Newton Moor, slowing shredding in the wind. I keep meaning to clean it up but put that fiddly job…
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Dydd GƔyl Dewi hapus
Well, Spring has sprung, it’s pancake day, and of course it’s St. David’s day, so ‘Dydd GĆ”yl Dewi hapus‘ to all you Welsh speakers. As one proverb says ‘March (has) many weathers‘ so it’s not surprising that there are many proverbs foretelling the weather. If we have a wet month, we might say: A wet…