Category: Roseberry Topping
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Before Satellites Spoilt the Fun: The Rise of Triangulation
Trig points cling to hilltops like relics from a time when humans trusted metal and masonry rather than shining toys orbiting the earth. This one on Roseberry’s summit keeps being repainted in traditional white, only to be graffited again by passing aritists who imagine posterity cares about their scribblings. With GPS now doing the clever…
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December Arrives and Haws for the Birds
And so we stumble into December, once the proud tenth month of a Roman calendar designed by people who thought it wise to leave sixty days of winter adrift like sheep in a snow drift. Eventually they realised this was a fool’s errand, tacked on January and February, and shuffled December to twelfth place. One…
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Little Roseberry and an Echo of Old Norse
From this viewpoint on Ryston Bank the knoll of Little Roseberry takes on a presence rather more commanding than its shy appearance on the O.S. Map, where it is denied even a ring contour. If the name Roseberry grew out of “Othenesberg”, the Old Norse for Odin’s Hill, it seems a touch peculiar that its…
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Solitude on Roseberry
The summit of Roseberry lay in an uncanny hush this morning, hidden beneath a dense veil of cloud that turned the familiar rocks into something resembling a far-off alpine mountain. The first snow of winter was still drifting down in slow, wavering flakes, a little damp but enthralling nonetheless. The whole scene felt charged with…
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Shale, Sandstone and a Coffee Cup
I set out this morning hoping to capture a clear view of the mound on Roseberry’s western slope, formed by the landslip of May 1912. The result was underwhelming; the photograph failed to do justice to the defining shape of the old slump. During the second week of that May, a great section of Roseberry’s…
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RIP SKIPPY: A Memorial Nobody Wants
Just below the summit of Roseberry Topping—a name that sounds like a pudding but is in fact Teesside’s iconic hill—there’s a large crag sandstone, rock that was laid down millions of years ago. The hill itself has only existed for twenty thousand or so, which makes it practically new money in geological terms. Moss and…
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Aireyholme: The Humble Launchpad of Empire’s Favourite Navigator
From the summit of Roseberry Topping, the Cleveland landscape performs its finest impression of timeless rural charm: undulating green fields stitched together by hedgerows, with Aireyholme Farm sitting unobtrusively in the middle like it’s been dropped there by a distracted cartographer. This was the patch of the country where the young James Cook grew up,…
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The Summerhouse Below Roseberry
A small plaque fastened to the wall of this sandstone shell of a building offers a neat explanation. It claims this was once a shooting box, commissioned by Commodore William Wilson of Ayton Hall. A tidy story, except for one small problem. It does not add up. A sketch by George Cruit in 1788 proves…
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Down among the Thistles
The hedgerows are heavy with the spoils of summer. Blackberries shine darkly in the shade, crab apples blush among the leaves, and Rowan berries hang in bright clusters. Rosebay Willowherb releases its silky seeds to the wind, while the thistles too surrender their down, sending it drifting like smoke across the fields. Thistles are cursed…
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The Windmills Are Winning
Ah yes, a truly legendary clash of minds and metal, as the supremely rational, astoundingly gifted Don Quixote—sharp as ever—heroically attacks a gang of… consults notes… windmills. Indeed. Definitely windmills. Not, say, wind turbines, or anything remotely threatening like giant knights in armour. From atop Roseberry Topping, the view is tragic. The frontline of windmills…