Tag: National Trust
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Roseberry Common: Reliving an old training route over the bracken
One of my favourite training routes used to be a circuit around Roseberry Common, where I would carefully choose the best path through the varied terrain. I like to revisit this route before the bracken becomes too thick to navigate. When I look at the Topping from this viewpoint, the dominant colours are those of…
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“Blackbird singing in the dead of night”
Blackbirds are one of those enchanting creatures that we all seem to have a soft spot for. You can spot these feathered friends in all sorts of habitats, from woodlands to our gardens. Interestingly, blackbirds have been part of our cultural consciousness for centuries – just think of the famous nursery rhyme that dates back…
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Following the feetings
A ‘feetin’ is a North Yorkshire word for a footprint, “a mark or impression left by the foot“. In East Anglian a variation, ‘feetings’, is used specifically for the tracks of creatures in the snow. I do like this use of the word. Newton Moor had feetings in abundance this morning. Mostly Grouse, occasionally ending…
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An early run taking in the top of the quarry at Cliff Rigg
A super morning, dry and sunny with some noticeable southerly winds. To the west, a large bank of cloud looks ominous but kept its distance. The quarry, now under the custodianship of the National Trust, is the result of the extensive extraction of Whinstone or dolerite, an extremely hard igneous rock that was ideal for…
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“T’ biggest hill in all Yorkshur”
It is generally accepted that the now populous district of the North Riding which we call Cleveland is bounded on its southern extremity by the Cleveland Hills. This is not so. Historically, the district of Cleveland comprises the archdeaconry of that name, which extends considerably farther south, as far as Pickering, retaining in part the…
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On this day in 2000, the Labour Government’s first attempt to repeal Section 28 was defeated in the House of Lords
Section 28 had been introduced by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities. Later that year the Prime Minister Tony Blair would claim that opposition to reform was “a piece of prejudice, pure and simple“. The Shadow education secretary Theresa May called the defeat “a victory for…
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Long Causeway
A strange name for a farmstead, perhaps a reference to the post medieval trackway that can be discerned by a faint holloway parallel to the dry-stone wall in the photo. I once read that large earthfast boulders in a wall is an indication that the wall is of some antiquity. The farm was a beneficiary…
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Roseberry Directissimo
The main path up Roseberry Topping, stairway into the cloud. Deteriorating badly. The path was improved in 1993, when a helicopter was used to airlift 200 tonnes of stone from the lane past Aireyholme Farm. The zig-zag path was then pitched using a “technique used since Roman times” and the verges revegetated. The work was…
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Bransdale — a dire forecast but it turned out alright
With flashes of sunshine from the blue-bores sweeping down the dale. Back at Barkers Plantation in Bransdale, the National Trust property in the heart of the North York Moors. But approaching the woodland from a different direction so a view I’ve never seen before. The house at the bottom of the photo is named Wind…
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Tis the season for burning
The annual burning of the heather moorland has begun — to the left of the house on the hill, up Badger Gill. Several of the tell-tale plumes could be seen on the way over into Bransdale. The house is Smout House, a mid-19th century farmstead, although until the 1952 edition of the O.S. map, the…