• Bransdale

    Bransdale

    A refreshing day spent in Bransdale, making repairs to some of the field boundaries. Bransdale’s walls are quite distinctive. In other uplands, dry stone walls are constructed of two skins of stonework, usually dressed and tapering inwards towards the top, with the gap filled with small pieces. Bransdale’s walls are just a single skin, huge…

  • Bankside Farm, Kildale

    Bankside Farm, Kildale

    On 31st August 1939, 48 children each carrying a gas mask and a small suitcase containing prescribed essentials and with a label attached to their coats arrived bewildered at Kildale railway station. Most were from Newcastle and Gateshead, conurbations with heavy industries which had been assessed had a high risk of being bombed. They were…

  • Designated Landscapes Review

    Designated Landscapes Review

    In January 2018 the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs published a 25 Year Plan for the Environment with the intention of setting out an approach to protect the landscapes and habitats in England and committed to undertake a review of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). Last week the Landscapes…

  • Autumn Equinox

    Autumn Equinox

    At 08:50 this morning the ecliptic path of the Sun crossed the celestial equator and day and night were of equal length. For those of us in the northern hemisphere it’s the Autumn Equinox. So my project for today was to take an autumnal photo. I had in mind a palette of “feuille-morte” of the…

  • Hambleton Street

    Hambleton Street

    I find this track, between Sneck Yate with Square Corner, to be one of most tedious on the North York Moors. It follows the old drovers’ route between Scotland and the south of England. The term ‘street’ may suggest a Roman origin but although the Romans may well have used it (there have been Roman…

  • The Bilsdale Bombardier

    The Bilsdale Bombardier

    A view down Garfit Gap and into Bilsdale. The farm in the centre is Whingroves, which seems to have diversified into an industrial pheasant rearing farm. In 1896 though it would have been a typical North York Moors dales mixed farm, run by Isaac Garbutt, a family name that has been recorded in the Bilsdale…

  • Freebrough Hill and Dimmingdale

    Freebrough Hill and Dimmingdale

    Around the time when Robert the Bruce defeated the English forces at the Battle of Bannockburn, Edward Trotter was farming in Dimmingdale, near the distinctive Freebrough Hill. One spring evening in May, Edward was checking his sheep and lambs grazing on the slope of Freebrough Hill. Suddenly, something spooked one ewe which ran off with…

  • Blakey Topping

    Blakey Topping

    Some say it was the giant Wade that created Blakey Topping when he had a tiff with his wife, Bell, and threw lumps of earth at her as she ran across the moor. Where he scooped up the earth is now known as the Hole of Horcum. Of course, the geologists tell us it is…

  • Two boundary stones and a Bronze Age round cairn

    Two boundary stones and a Bronze Age round cairn

    On Great Ayton Moor, a jumbled pile of stones on top of a Bronze Age round cairn and partly buried are two roughly dressed limestone boundary stones. One is inscribed “TKS 1815” while is inscribed “RY 1752” on the east side and “GN” on the west side. I don’t know about the “TKS” or “GN”…

  • Stool End Farm, Great Langdale

    Stool End Farm, Great Langdale

    Still the worse for wear after Sunday’s exertions in the Lakes so stayed local. Perhaps it’s cheating a bit but I took this photo yesterday morning when we woke up to a cracking sunrise. Stool End Farm at the foot of The Band, a relentless 800m ridge climb to Bowfell. Open Space Web-Map builder Code

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