Category: North Yorkshire
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Easby Moor
It’s that mellow time of the year with every other field growing rapeseed. Used for animal feeds, vegetable oil and biodiesel. Easby Moor in the distance with Captain Cook’s monument. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Grey Wagtail
Spotted this little beauty along the River Leven, feeding on insects and invertebrates amongst the gravels. But disappointed to discover it was only a “grey” wagtail. Surely the yellow on its underside would have warranted a better, more expressive name. Scientific name Motacilla cinerea. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Holme Beck, Great Broughton
Or it may be Broughton Beck, so named on the Ordnance Survey map downstream. Upstream of the village, the map says Holme Beck. And closer to the Cleveland Hills where it tumbles down from its source below Donna Cross the watercourse is called Trows Beck. Three name changes in as many miles. The series of…
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Quaker Graveyard, Great Ayton
The Religious Society of Friends was first recorded in the village in 1689 with the ending official persecution when the magistrates at Thirsk issued a certificate to establish a place of worship. This would have been a room in a private house but by the turn of the century, a specific meeting house had been…
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Great Ayton Weighbridge
I heard earlier this week that the demolition of this small building in the old goods yard at Great Ayton railway station was imminent. Yesterday’s snow might have given it a few days reprieve. It’s an old weighbridge and buried in the tangled undergrowth is, I am told, the weighing mechanism built by Henry Pooley…
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Cat Ice
On a puddle on Newton Moor, cat ice, ice so thin that a cat could just stand on it without it cracking. Not so a big black dog. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Whorlton Church Graveyard
Christian burials are usually aligned east-west with the feet at the east so that at the moment of resurrection the deceased will face Jesus who will be coming from the east. Gravestones are meant to be read from the feet so face east. The gravestones at the ruined church of Whorlton generally follow this tradition.…
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Botton Head, site of a WW2 air crash
Climbed Botton Head onto Greenhow Moor in search of the site of a WW2 air crash. On 21 October 1940 an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk. V was returning to its base at RAF Linton on Ouse, just off the A19 north of York, from a raid on the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia, crashing into the…
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Oxbow pond near Holmes Bridge
Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day. From now we can look forward to longer days. On the River Leven, just upstream of Holmes Bridge is an oxbow lake, an old loop of the river. It had almost silted up but is now being used to re-flood when the river is high. Wattle fencing…
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Ayton Mines Memorial Bridge
During a brief break in the weather a chance to photograph a swollen River Leven below the Ayton Mines Memorial Bridge near Suggits. The footbridge was erected as a memorial to the five workers of Ayton Mines who lost their lives during the 1914-1918 war: From the 4th Battalion, Alexandra Princess of Wales’s Own (Yorkshire)…