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Coquet Island
An RSPB reserve about 1½ km offshore at Amble. Apparently it’s home to a colony of Roseate Terns. In the 7th-century the monk Cuthbert, living as a hermit, met Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby here. The island’s isolation appealed to many later medieval hermits and became a Benedictine monastic cell linked to Tynemouth Priory. The tower…
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Durridge Bay
I must be something of a thalassophile at heart because I do enjoy running along the coast, even though memories of being helplessly seasick are so vivid. But then a beach is also the worst place to run. Time never passes. The beach at Durridge Bay on the Northumberland coast is a 7 mile stretch…
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Tripsdale
In Bransdale on a dull, damp morning installing some rabbit fencing for the National Trust. Digging a trench to bury some chicken wire. That’ll stop the rabbits burrowing under. Up to my ankles in mud. The rabbits would need some serious snorkelling equipment. All not very photogenic so here’s a picture from yesterday. Tripsdale viewed…
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Nab End Moor
It’s been a while since I popped into Tripsdale, a wonderful remote valley though a lack of paths and a dense covering of bracken made a crossing exhausting. There’s a lot of water around, becks are full. Mist clung in the valleys but blue skies broke out on the tops. This is Nab End Moor…
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Skinningrove’s Greatest Showman
With a theme of “Skinningrove’s Greatest Showman”, the final touches are being made to Skinningrove’s enormous bonfire. A tribute to a 19th-century local miner, Henry Cooper, “The Yorkshire Giant – Tallest Man in the World”, who travelled across America with P. T. Barnum’s Travelling Show. At eight and a half feet tall, Cooper was actually…
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A Snow Bunting arrives on Mischief Night
I spotted this little cutie on the top of Roseberry this morning. I think it’s a juvenile male Snow Bunting but I’m open to being told otherwise. Probably having a breather after its nocturnal migration from its Arctic breeding grounds. Usually seen in flocks so I guess this one has lost its mates en route.…
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Wheeldale
Wheeldale Beck, one of the upper tributaries of the Murk Esk, between Goathland and Wheeldale Moors. The house bottom left is Wheeldale Lodge, built at the turn of the 20th century as a gamekeeper’s house, probably James Patterson, who was the keeper to the Duchy of Lancaster when he “discovered” the nearby “Roman Road” in…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
The 2nd of November. I have been wanting to take a trip to Otterington just south of Northallerton on this day for a few years now. But again it slipped my mind until too late to arrange. So a tenuous connection I’m afraid. In the distance of this photo of Capt. Cook’s Monument lies Middlesbrough…
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High Bousdale from Roseberry
A view from the summit of Roseberry Topping towards Guisborough down the forested valley of High Bousdale, between Bousdale Hill and Ryston Bank with the Hanging Stone at its nab. High Bousdale was once contemplated as a means of access to the ironstone holdings below Roseberry. There would have been an incline from the Middlesbrough…
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Moor burning on Commondale Moor
With the advent of the autumnal fine weather, the heather burning season has quickly got underway. At least half a dozen fires could be seen from Ainthorpe Rigg today with smoke was creeping down on to Guisborough and the Esk valley. A sharp contrast to just six weeks ago when the North York Moors National…
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