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A night under the stars
I find myself temporarily off grid, so my posts shall be rather scarce for a time. But lo and behold, gaze upon this splendid sight of the Scafell massif, captured after a night spent beneath the stars upon Esk Pike. My duty was to man a checkpoint for the Lake District Mountain Trial. Alas, a…
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Blakey Ridge and The Lion Inn: From Crutched Friars to Modern Hikers
A view across Rosedale towards Blakey Ridge. In the front, Florence Terrace, one of many rows of terraced cottages built to house the ironstone miners and their families. Rosedale’s population surged in the two decades between 1851 and 1871. Barely discernible on the distant skyline stands the Lion Inn. There are few inns more remote,…
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Codhill Quarry—A 19th-Century Legacy
Here on Codhill, on Gisborough Moors, is one of a pair of small sandstone quarries. Probably 19th-century. It couldn’t have produced any significant amount of rock, likely used for some dry stone walling over at Sleddale Farm. Really, there is not much else to say about this feature. Now, the day started off all hot…
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Woolly Olympics—High Jumps and Clever Ewes
“The sheep is said to be naturally dull and stupid. Of all quadrupeds it is the most foolish: it will saunter away to lonely places with no object in view; oftentimes in stormy weather it will stray from shelter; if it be overtaken by a snowstorm, it will stand still unless the shepherd sets it…
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Woke Showdown: National Trust vs. Restore Trust
Ah, Roseberry Topping, Yorkshire’s Matterhorn, one of those many places the National Trust looks after. Now, in 2020, the Trust issued a report, a bit of a mouthful, called ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery.‘ They wanted to tell about how their 93 historic houses are tied up with the British Empire, the…
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The Crags of White Hill: Evidence of a 1872 Landslip
A brisk autumn morning but with a subtle nip in the roriferous air, though the temperature would soon be rising. A warm day beckoned. Meanwhile, 377,000 kilometres away, the moon hangs in the morning sky, as is often the case during its waning gibbous phase, when it transitions from full to half. Down below on…
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Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment
I’ve been diving back into that book, “Rock Art and Ritual,” the one I got off eBay a few weeks back. It’s been giving me the itch to go revisit some of the out of the way nooks and crannies on the North York Moors. So today, I took a little jaunt around Urra Moor,…
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The Cairn, the Schoolboy and the Vulpicide Outrage of 1903
A rickety cairn, perched precariously over Baysdale. I was told by a onetime resident of the dale that the cairn was built by Roland Close, an estate worker and archaeologist, who was brought up in Shepherd’s House, which can be seen in the distance. Close would walk this way to school in Kildale. A curious report…
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On this day in 1804: Jane Ewbank’s Journey to Whitby
Hardly a week goes by without news of some historical document being digitised. Recently, a diary of a lady named Jane Ewbank who lived in York during the time of the Napoleonic Wars has been published. Jane was born in 1778, and her father, George Ewbank, was a well-known druggist and banker in York. He…
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Benchmark on Kildale Moor
I unexpectedly stumbled upon this benchmark a week ago. And yesterday, seeking a breather after a gruelling climb from Hob Hole, I concealed my bike amidst the heather, then ambled a couple hundred metres to revisit it. The mark, showing little sign of erosion, distinctly directs attention to a notch atop the boulder. Clearly an…
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