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Clumber Park Church
I rarely do churches, or indeed buildings of any kind, unless they are in ruins, but I’ve long been familar with the distinctive Church of Mary the Virgin at Clumber Park, a National Trust property forming part of the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire. It’s not that I’ve ever been inside but the unique imposing architecture of…
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Nanny Meyer’s Incline
I saw the name on the map and I just knew I had to see. I had a few hours to kill in Durham so decided to drive up to the moors around the head of the Derwent Valley. The moorland around is bleak and lonely with just a scattering of farmsteads. So who was…
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The Cheese Stone
The Cheese Stone is a group of sandstone boulders on the ridge between Grain Beck and Black Beck, two tributaries of Baysdale Beck. One must be the Cheese Stone but which it is, is open to debate. There are at least two contenders. The stones do add some interest on an otherwise featureless moorland that…
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Belman Bank Quarry
Recent tree felling in Guisborough Woods, ok maybe not that recent, might be a couple of years now, have exposed the outline of the large alum quarry at Belman Bank south of Guisborough. For many years any evidence of the quarry has been lost under the canopy of commercial forestry. A couple of weeks ago…
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12th December – a special day
For Herr and Fru Munch who would, in 1863, have been celebrating the birth of their first son, Edvard, who would in his time become Norway’s most famous painter; for Frank ‘old blue eyes’ Sinatra, who, in 1992, would have been celebrating his 77th birthday; and for Princess Anne who, on the same day, would…
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Airy Holme Lane
Finally it snew overnight. No, that’s not a typo, just the archaic past tense of the word snow. Just as knew and know, and grew and grow. I love to resurrect these lost words. The snow has transformed this photo of Airy Holme Lane, the Public Bridleway that runs between Aireyholme Farm and the col…
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Cod Beck Reservoir
A bitterly cold morning but, disappointingly, no snow. No wind too so not a ripple on Cod Beck Reservoir. Perfect reflections. Taken just about where the old farmstead of Wildgoose Nest would have stood before Cod Beck was flooded in the early 1950s. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Huntcliff
From Saltburn pier. No surfers out today though wild breaking waves fueled by a piercing north wind. A running sea of sugar loaves. Gulls circled the pier hoovering up dropped chips. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Black Howes, Moorsholm Moor
A skith of snow turn Black Howes on Moorsholm Moor negative. A skith being the name for light covering of snow. The Bronze Age burial mound is one of a pair of round barrows which I last visited in the spring when they really were black but the black of the charred remains of recently…
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Dressed stones on Bridestones Moor
A bit of a mystery. Bridestones Moor is unmanaged diverse heather moorland, a National Trust property, bisected by a steep griff or valley along the edge of which are the Bridestones, calcareous sandstone towers weathered into surreal shapes. There is no other rock exposed on the moor, no scattered boulders. Limestone was quarried in a…
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