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Top of Thief Lane
I woke up the the farming programme this morning, a weekly roundup as it’s Saturday, and one of the items was that 20 years ago yesterday, in 2001, was the first outbreak of foot and mouth at an abattoir in Essex. This lead to a nationwide lockdown not so dissimilar to our current one. The…
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A pair of boundary stones
Earlier this week, I wrote about ‘The Race’, a leat built in the early 18th-century to capture water from the Esk side of Great Ayton Moor. There’s more here. This boundary stone is located just inside the forestry boundary next to ‘The Race’ above Hell Gill. It is inscribed ‘TC 1860’, which refers to Admiral…
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Rock outcrop on Great Hograh Moor
I’ve been wanting to try and find this rock outcrop for some time (a bit of intel from John, thanks). Armed with a grid reference, I parked at Hob Hole and climbed up to the Skinner Howe Cross Road on a wintry morning. The outcrop was easy to find, a large overhang which has been…
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Hell Gill Reservoir
A familiar feature for those in the know. Tucked away a few metres up from the main forest track. A much used control site in orienteering races. This reservoir near the head of Hell Gill was built in the 1870s to supply water for Joseph Whitwell Pease’s Hutton Estate. The mains ran first to Home…
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Pancake Day
On my way to Northallerton to get jabbed, so popped over into Cod Beck on the way. This is a view of Scarth Nick and Sheep Wash from Priest’s Spa Quarry on Hither Moor. And it’s Pancake Day too, a day when many traditions have been lost to history. Shrove Tuesday, the day before the…
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On this day, in 1971, the end of an era
As we further attempt to cocoon ourselves from the European project, now may be the time to think again about that disastrous venture that happened on this day in 1971, fifty years ago. Decimalisation was the brainchild of Ted Heath’s Tory Government, plunging the country into chaos. Overnight the old currency of pounds, shillings and…
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Slacks Quarry
This must be one of the oldest whinstone quarries in the Ayton area. It is shown on the 1856 6″ O.S. map which predates the huge Cliff Ridge quarry but there are workings shown on Langbaugh Ridge (to the west of the Guisborough road) and at Dingledow Quarry (to the east of it). Whinstone is…
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Rivelingdale from Potters Ridge
The image belies the buffeting I was getting by the bitter wind. I was on Potters Ridge, a small 24m high prominence of Guisborough Moor. Highcliff Nab is at the north-western end, and views of Sleddale and Rivelingdale on the southern, the ridge bisected by the forestry boundary fence. I am currently reading ‘Sapiens’ by…
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Bloworth Slack
Seduced by the cracking weather over the last few days, I dug out the vintage cross country skis from the loft and headed over to Bloworth Crossing. Blue skies at first but by the time I got to the old mineral railway it had closed in with snow flurries in the air. A tempting hint…
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Lonsdale
Sylvia Plath tragically ended her life on this day in 1963. She was a 30 year old American poet, coping on her own in a house in London with two tiny children by the future Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes who had left her the previous year. She’d had some success as a poet, the Observer…
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