Tag: National Trust
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Beyond Apathy — Learning to Care Again
Appreciation of nature arrives like sunrise through a dark forest. What was once the shadow of youth becomes colour. Grass, rock, heather all minding their own business, doing it well. For the moment the world makes sense and you do too. You are small, but not spare. You fit. That is enough. Then, darkness returns.…
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Newton Wood and the Afterlife of a Dying Ash
Just after dawn, Newton Wood sits under a light dusting of snow. The sky is a hard, clear blue. Bare deciduous trees stretch their thin arms upward, as if hoping for better weather later. Left of centre stands a prominent ash tree. Its trunk is tall and thick, brutally pruned and cut short. It looks…
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Grey Weather and Old Ways on Newton Moor
A crisp, delightful morning on Newton Moor, in spite of a forecast that promises trouble. A depression over the Baltic is dragging down sharp northerly winds. That slab of grey on the horizon looks close enough to touch, yet, if that is so, it will be hanging over Scandinavia. In the foreground runs a straight,…
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A Glimpse of a Windhover
Despite spending at least two hours outdoors on most days, close meetings with nature are actually quite thin on the ground. There is the odd distant view, a brief flicker at the edge of sight, usually gone before my patience can catch up. My bird identification skills are basic, but even I know this much.…
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A Long View from Cockle Scar
Scar, scarp and escarpment have a knack for muddling people. The landforms overlap, and to add to the fun a scarp can carry several scars on its own back. Despite how they look, scar is not related to the other two. It comes from the Old Norse “sker”, meaning crag, with a nod to “sgeir”.…
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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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Solitude on Roseberry
The summit of Roseberry lay in an uncanny hush this morning, hidden beneath a dense veil of cloud that turned the familiar rocks into something resembling a far-off alpine mountain. The first snow of winter was still drifting down in slow, wavering flakes, a little damp but enthralling nonetheless. The whole scene felt charged with…
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Breck House and an Athletic John Brown
A blocked road just north of Helmsley forced us into a long and meandering detour on our way to Bonfield Ghyll. Still, it offered the consolation of fresh glimpses of familiar country. This is Breck House in upper Bransdale, a solid stone-built Moors farmhouse dating to after 1850. Yet an estate survey from 1782 records…
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Nettle Wood in Autumn’s Glow
Nettle Hole: Two modest parcels of woodland lie beside Cliff Ridge Wood, gifted to the National Trust in 1991 by Lady Fry for the princely sum of ten pounds. A bargain, one might say, for a place that now looks splendid in autumn, its beech saplings blazing away where once nettles ruled. Farmers, of course,…
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Shale, Sandstone and a Coffee Cup
I set out this morning hoping to capture a clear view of the mound on Roseberry’s western slope, formed by the landslip of May 1912. The result was underwhelming; the photograph failed to do justice to the defining shape of the old slump. During the second week of that May, a great section of Roseberry’s…