Tag: National Trust
-
Roseberry Well
I’ve been saving this for a rainy day. For when the clag’s down. And the wind is whipping up the snowflakes. This small damp gash in the hillside is likely to be the Roseberry Well where a young prince was said to have drowned. Nowadays no water flows from the spring and the crevice acts…
-
Bridestone Griff
A slight covering of snow completely transforms the otherwise drab winter colours of Bridestones Moor. The is the upper reaches of Bridestone Griff. A griff is a North Yorkshire term for a deep, narrow valley, said to have formed by glacial melt-water, and sure enough, lower down, the glen does become steep but here, high…
-
Roseberry Common
A glorious morning on Roseberry. The light overnight snow has highlighted the scars left by 19th century jet mining. The spoil still sterile after all these years. The hard black fossil of the Monkey Puzzle tree has been prized for jewellery since the Bronze Age but it was made fashionable by Queen Victoria after the…
-
Today is St. Thomas’s Day
Or is it? The great god Wikipedia says is 21st December, tomorrow. But Rev. J. C. Atkinson in his 1858 tome “Forty Years in a Moorland Parish” writes that it is the 20th December. I am more inclined to believe the Reverend. An old-fashioned book sitting on my shelf has more authenticity. Whatever the day…
-
Nuthatch
You will probably hear this little bird before you see it. It’s very vocal, singing a variety of loud songs with lots of different whistle-sounding notes. It’s the nuthatch, nut jobber, nut cracker, nut pecker or wood cracker. All referring to its habit of lodging nuts in crevices in the bark of trees to crack…
-
First snow of the winter
Whoopee. Woke up to falling snow. The first of the winter. And much more to come according to the Express. Their forecast is the coldest winter for years. Very dire, El Nino’s fault apparently. The photo is on Roseberry Common looking up Little Roseberry. The snow was now sleet. Remembered my hat, remembered my gloves…
-
Bridestones Moor
The National Trust’s rare area of heather moorland just north of Dalby Forest. Rare because it is not intensively managed unlike most of the rest of heather moorlands on the North York Moors which are managed for one purpose only, that is to maximise the breeding of grouse for shooting, in spite of having the…
-
As mad as an atter
In Dovedale Griff near Dalby Forest volunteering with the National Trust when this little beauty was discovered in one of their reptile habitats. Now I have it somewhere in the back of my mind that “an Adder” was originally “a Nadder”. No idea where this came from, I could well have dreamt it. But Google…
-
Coniston Hall
It’s eighteen years since I was last at Coniston Hall. A National Trust tenanted farm run as a campsite on the side of Coniston Water. Very little changed, still as popular. The vernacular architecture of the Lakeland chimneys still intrigues me. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
-
Wakey, wakey, campers
Out and about in Cliff Rigg Wood early on a lovely fresh morning, the start of the weekend, but then I smelt smoke, and then a red mist covered my eyes. But maybe the tents won’t be torched, easier than packing, the brown stuff on the baby wipes on the path is only just chocolate,…