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Boulder, Potters Ridge
It always surprises me that this large flat boulder, on Potters Ridge around the back of Highcliff Nab is not named on any map. It is certainly significant and its location on a high point on the North York Moors escarpment only slightly lower than surrounding tops would have been a natural draw for prehistoric…
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Boxing Day Hunt
The Cleveland Hunt traditionally starts from Great Ayton High Green on Boxing Day. Now I have two issues with fox hunting. Firstly there is much evidence that, in spite of the hunting of animals with dogs having been illegal since 2004, the law is being circumvented by the pretence that hunts are conducted under the…
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Lonsdale
A side valley of Kildale on a sunny Christmas Day. The farm in the centre we still know as Smelly Farm. Well, that was twenty years ago, it has been tidied up since and no longer exudes the particular miasmas. And of course, it was never a farm as such just a range of barns.…
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It’s a dog’s life
The ignominy of it. All year I’ve been made to climb the steepest hills, swim the deepest bogs, paddle through farmyard gloop, clamber over tallest stiles and now I’m made to pose here with this piece of Christmas tat. Wishing everyone a very merry Christmas. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Roseberry skyline
The farmland between the Eston Hills and Roseberry Topping is known as The Carrs, a name which has roots in the Scandinavian kjall meaning a water meadow with scattered trees of alder or willow. The modern Ordnance Survey map names it merely as The Flats, and it is indeed flat. But it made a change,…
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South End, Great Fryup Dale
On Glaisdale Rigg looking across a sea of cloud to the whaleback hill known as Heads which separates the two Fryup Dales, Great and Little. The sun is shining on the South End of Heads. Temperature or cloud inversions offer the most spectacular atmospheric conditions. The dense cold air of the valley is capped by…
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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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St. Thomas’s Day
December 20th, the feast of St. Thomas, or Doubting Thomas as he is sometimes referred because he doubted Jesus’s resurrection, was a bit of a special day for Yorkshire folk. The Rev. Atkinson in the 19th-century wrote of the custom of children going a-Thomassing, that is visiting houses on this day and asking for Thomas’s…
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Guisborough at night
A walk up to Highcliff Nab, looking down on a twinkling Guisborough. A sign of the season, lines of deep blue, the most disagreeable colour for Christmas lights, decorating eaves of houses. Top left, a row of red lights: the wind farm off Redcar, flickering as the blades rotate. A few ships out in the…
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Dibble Bridge
Spanning the Esk, a mile west of Castleton is the 18th century Dibble Bridge. Built of local sandstone, the bridge has been designated a Grade II listing “building” by Historic England. The name, however, indicates a much older crossing of the river for the etymologists tell us the name has Old Engilsh roots. Deop means…
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