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Lost Without Moving: Britain’s Wandering North
A cracking morning. This view looks north-east from Newton Moor, over Guisborough, out to the North Sea and whatever lies beyond it, behaving impeccably for once. “Grid to mag, add; mag to grid, get rid” is the sort of mnemonic that lodges in the brain for life, usually thanks to the Cubs and a damp…
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Solstice Greetings from Oakdale
Forty years ago, sending and receiving Christmas cards felt like a rite of passage, a quiet signal that one had stepped into adulthood and set up house. Some even embraced the annual letter, chronicling the family triumphs and tribulations for distant friends and relatives. We never warmed to the round-robin missive that trumpeted life’s successes,…
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Crimson Herald of the Coming Sun
This is a novelty for this long-suffering blog: a photograph taken from my very own doorstep, with sunrise still twenty minutes off and the sky already plotting its little drama. Most people know the old saying about the red sky and the fortunes of sailors, with its murky origins somewhere in scripture and the occasional…
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The “T” Stones of Bilsdale West Moor
The North York Moors are littered with boundary stones, each one usually stamped with a dutiful little initial, the sort of thing an aristocratic landowner might choose when feeling terribly important. An “M” for Manners, an “F” for Feversham, a “CD” for Charles Duncombe. All very neat, all very tidy. Then you stumble upon a…
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The Scar on the Hill: Cliff Rigg Quarry
A dreich veil hung over North Yorkshire this morning, so I look back instead to yesterday, when the sky was clear, the air still, and the sun at least toyed with the idea of shining. Cliff Rigg Quarry looms above Great Ayton, a cavernous rent in the hillside left behind by an industry that has…
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Glaisdale’s Brief Age of Iron
Glaisdale began life as a quiet township within the parish of Danby, its name shifting through the centuries as Glasedale and Glacedale. Records from 1223 already linked it with the broad sweep of Glaisdale Moor, giving a sense of a place long settled into its landscape. For much of its history it has been a…
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Glaisdale and the Enigma of T. H.
Some two hundred yards up from the foot of the lane that strains its way up Caper Hill, a dry-stone wall is built around a large orthostat. Rough-hewn at the edges and smoothed across its face, it carries a message cut by hand in the late seventeenth century. Kneeling in the damp and wind, its…
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Scarth Nick and the Making of a Landscape
Scarth Nick, a dry trench bordered by steep banks of bracken and heather, stands as a striking reminder of the fierce sculpting of the great Ice Age. Around fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, a glacier from the north spread across the vale of Cleveland and pushed an icy tongue deep into Scugdale. As it…
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Before Satellites Spoilt the Fun: The Rise of Triangulation
Trig points cling to hilltops like relics from a time when humans trusted metal and masonry rather than shining toys orbiting the earth. This one on Roseberry’s summit keeps being repainted in traditional white, only to be graffited again by passing aritists who imagine posterity cares about their scribblings. With GPS now doing the clever…
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A Heart over The Ship Inn
Is that a heart floating above The Ship Inn at Old Saltburn. Charming. The pilot must have been struck by a fit of sentiment, or perhaps simply bored stiff. Back in the eighteenth century this tiny fishing village beneath Huntcliff and the ever-so-subtle Cat Nab managed to support four inns, plus enough gin shops to…
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