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The Devil’s Leap
The Devil, it turns out, once lost an argument and dropped a boulder in a strop. That is the sort of local history we deserve more of. Walk along to Roulston Scar and you are standing on a summit 1,246 feet above the level of the sea, with the Vale of York and the Vale…
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Hood Grange
Behind this somewhat sad stone farmhouse lies eight centuries of quiet drama. A hermitage stood here before 1138, when monks moved in under Roger de Mowbray’s patronage. Cistercians took the place over, then shuffled off to Old Byland after five years, then on to Byland Abbey proper. Augustinian canons from nearby Newburgh Priory moved into…
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The Squeeze: Roseberry Topping’s Disappearing Footpath
Climbing Roseberry Topping ought to be one of the simple joys in life. Not on this stretch. Here it is a “stinging” ordeal, and no mistake. A modern post-and-wire fence runs alongside a maturing line of hedge saplings, squeezed in next to the old boundary. They were planted a few years back. The result now…
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Petlar’s Bridge Quarry: A Brief Flirtation with Industry
I must have cycled past this old quarry near Petlar’s Bridge a couple of dozen times or so since the plantation hiding it was felled, and it has since been on my list to write about. The quarry likely pre-dates the Eskdale railway by half a century. One unverified internet source claims whinstone was extracted…
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Saltburn Sands From North Bank
North Bank is the steep cliff behind the Ship Inn at Old Saltburn, and not many know the National Trust owns it. I went there today for a bioblitz. That is jargon for an intensive, time-limited hunt to record every living thing on a patch of land, in this case bumblebees, butterflies, wildflowers, whatever moved…
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Ragwort: The Weed That Feeds the Bees
Three heatwaves have hit Britain since spring, baking the ground and warming the seas. Humidity makes it feel worse. Soil has dried fast, wildfire risk is high, and marine life is under strain too. The Met Office, says cooler air is due soon, but rain is not, so dry days continue. Some plants seem to…
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“F RO END”
I have caught sight of this guidestone plenty of times, hurtling past at sixty miles an hour. Stopping on the Blakey Ridge road is no small feat. A bike makes it far simpler. The stone reads “F RO END”, short for “FARNDALE ROAD END”. It dates from around 1720, part of an early eighteenth century…
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Scugdale: The Valley That Runs the Wrong Way
Scugdale does not behave the way a North York Moors dale ought to. Most valleys here dip eastward, following the grain of the rock. Scugdale cuts north west instead, breaking through the Jurassic escarpment against the run of things. Geologists have never quite settled why. It may be the leftover of a larger dale that…
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Percy Rigg: Iron Age Living
The heather has gone. Local archaeologists have begun to strip the vegetation back to where the 1960s excavators left off, not to dig fresh ground, but to expose what was already found and read it again with sharper eyes. The aim is a proper sequence: which house came first, which blocked which, and how five…
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Cock Howe — After the Fall
One thing that does not endear me to the moors is the endless gamekeepers’ access tracks. Miles of the stuff. Dull to run, duller to walk, but perfect for cycling, except our creaking access laws say no, thank you very much. One such track runs along the skyline of Bilsdale West Moor, from the Bilsdale…
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