Pot Luck

Of the three ironstone mines in the Great Ayton area, Ayton Banks Mine had the most difficult access. An aerial cableway had to be constructed to carry the ore the 1½ miles down to the North Eastern Railway. The mine was in operation for only sixteen years, from 1910 to 1926. First by the Tees Furnace Company then Burton & Sons. […]

The other day, while wandering the web as one does when sense has taken the afternoon off, I found a digitised photocopy of a 1982 legal decision about Tidkinhow Moor. The page is mottled with foxing, stained by time, and the typewriter ink has faded like an old promise. It looked interesting to say the […]

When ‘J.G.’ passed through Skinningrove bay in 1866 on his way from Saltburn to Whitby, the village must have looked very different. The stone built houses were set back from the shore, to give some shelter from the North Sea; the rows of terraced cottages had still to be built. To visualise it best, it’s […]

A morning run up Clough Head before the weather turned. The 2,381 feet fell stands at the northern end of the Helvellyn ridge, a sentinel overlooking Threlkeld and the Glendermackin valley. It’s an out of the way hill I think I have only climbed a couple of times before, Blencathra across the valley always the […]

The scarps east of Settle rival any picture of the Dolomites. Vast columns of rock stand gaunt against the skyline, and in its shaded valleys, hill sheep regard the intruder with resentment and suspicion. The geology is almost absurb. Warrendale Knotts is a dramatic cliff of shattered limestone crags along the Mid Craven Fault — […]