• Ben Wyvis: A Hill Long Avoided, Finally Bagged

    Ben Wyvis: A Hill Long Avoided, Finally Bagged

    After years of driving past Ben Wyvis, I finally climbed it—through cloud, inversion, and a descent the guidebook called “grassy” but which turned out to be anything but. A solitary giant, well worth the wait.

  • Badenoch: The Drowned Land with a Golden Shore

    Badenoch: The Drowned Land with a Golden Shore

    Off to Badenoch—where the land is “drowned,” the beach is golden, and the names are mangled by history and tourists alike. A break from the Moors, into the Highlands.

  • Hulne Abbey: Where Friars Once Prayed, now a Nice Little Earner

    Hulne Abbey: Where Friars Once Prayed, now a Nice Little Earner

    It begins, as it so often does, with a memory. A passing mention of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—was it truly only yesterday?—and already the location scouts of fate have dragged us to another of its sites, like an ear-worm in your head. Hulne Abbey. Founded in the 13th century by Carmelite friars in search…

  • Witch Tree, Maiden Tree

    Witch Tree, Maiden Tree

    This week, public outrage greeted the news that two men have been found guilty of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree beside Hadrian’s Wall. Though obviously a cultural icon, sycamores are not native to Britain. The tree came from Europe and only arrived in Britain around the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The idea that Robin…

  • The Forgotten Incline of Ingleby Moor

    The Forgotten Incline of Ingleby Moor

    I had heard the National Park was up to something on the old railway incline up Ingleby Moor, so I went to see what the fuss was about. This is not the famous incline that once carried ironstone from Rosedale. It is one that runs roughly 350 metres to the south, leading to the Ingleby…

  • VE Day: 80 Years On

    VE Day: 80 Years On

    Eighty years have passed since Victory in Europe Day, a moment etched in the collective memory by black-and-white newsreels showing ecstatic crowds flooding the streets of London and other major cities. But away from the capital, in the quieter corners of Cleveland and North Yorkshire, the mood was more restrained — though no less meaningful,…

  • The Terminal Moraine at Kildale: Elgee Revisited

    The Terminal Moraine at Kildale: Elgee Revisited

    An early morning climb up Park Nab before the day’s work began at the Kildale chapel archaeological dig (Out & About passim). I shall wait until later in the season to write properly about that—when we have found something to write about. Instead, as I looked out over the valley, I found myself returning to…

  • How to Dress in the Water—Edwardian Advice from the Shoreline

    How to Dress in the Water—Edwardian Advice from the Shoreline

    Cattersty Sands looked perfect this morning. The sun was out, the beach was almost empty, and the North Sea glittered like it wanted to be inviting. It was not. Nobody so much as dipped a toe in. I had half expected to see someone bobbing about in neoprene—open-water swimming being all the rage now. Not…

  • Of Brass Monkeys, May Blossoms and Other Perils

    Of Brass Monkeys, May Blossoms and Other Perils

    Growing up in Nottingham in the early 1960s, I shall never forget me mam barking “naer cast a clout till May is out” whenever I dared venture into the Spring air without full Arctic gear—duffle coat, string vest, probably a balacalva too. She assumed, and I dutifully followed, “May”meant the month, which made sense given…

  • A Boundary Stone on Great Ayton Moor

    A Boundary Stone on Great Ayton Moor

    The weather has finally turned, quite refreshing from the stifling heat we have suffered over the past week. I found myself traversing Great Ayton Moor again, a route so familiar I could walk it blindfolded, past the same early 19th-century boundary stone I have already photographed more times than sense would justify. The gamekeepers, in…

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