A random selection …
The Wishing Stone
This has been on my to-do list since the spring after reading a blog post on the Arcanum web-site. It’s a large, deep, circular basin on a boulder on Ingleby Moor that is speculated to have be manmade and used for ritual purposes: the making of wishes or prayers, or curses and so on. As […]
Calm and wide, the River North Tyne, gently flows below Wark Bridge. It is not behaving naturally. It looks tame because, in a very real sense, it has been tamed. For most of its history the North Tyne did what upland rivers do: it raged when it rained and starved when it did not. Two […]
Bronze Age Guesswork on Wayworth Moor
The Moors are littered with standing stones, and behind each is its own little mystery. Some mark old routes. Some are gateposts that have outlived their gates. A few might be medieval crosses, worn down by weather and time until nobody can be certain. Others seem to have drawn an arbitrary line in the earth […]
A Dreary Day, a Doubtful Saint, and Too Much Christmas
A dreary, cold day, though mercifully not freezing, but with rain looming. St. Thomas’ Day Eve—dedicated to the patron saint of doubt—drapes itself in the sort of gloom that makes you wonder why you bothered to look out the window. That housing estate west of Guisborough in today’s photo? I had been blind to its […]
Has the Duke of York ever been to Yorkshire?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo of Capt. Cook’s Monument on Easby Moor. Ugly looking isn’t it. Its only beauty coming from its familiarity as part of the landscape. James Cook is of course Cleveland’s most famous son, even though when he left Middlesbrough was just a hamlet, home to 25 people […]