Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Tag: hill

  • Yorkshire’s Matterhorn

    Yorkshire’s Matterhorn

    A rushed snap as I pedalled home along Easby Lane. I don’t know who first compared Roseberry Topping with the Matterhorn. I traced one reference to 1890 but suspect it was already well in use. It is likely that the comparison dates from a few decades earlier following the first ascent of the ‘real’ Matterhorn…

  • Cranimoor

    Cranimoor

    Just ten minutes earlier the “hog-backed sweep of Cranimoor” as Frank Elgee wrote was clear. Time to head back to the car before the weather deteriorates. I am on Cold Moor looking across the col of Little Raisdale, for want of a better name. At 432 m, Cringle Moor, to give the hill its more…

  • The Battle of Homildon Hill

    The Battle of Homildon Hill

    I just love it when I learn something new out the blue. The plan was an early start to bag Humbleton Hill, a 298 metre hill overlooking Wooler. On the map, a hill peppered with Gothic letters: a couple of settlements, a fort, a hut circle, and a homestead. Plenty to pique my interest. But…

  • New memorial on Roseberry

    New memorial on Roseberry

    I must admit to feeling some disappointment when I found this wooden cross erected on the summit of Roseberry this morning. It’s some weight and would have been quite a task to carry it up. Even if it’s not intended to be permanent, is it fair to blight the hill for everyone else? And is…

  • A view of Roseberry from Aireyholme

    A view of Roseberry from Aireyholme

    At a quarter past seven on the evening of 15th June 1920, the world-famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba made history by singing across the airwaves in a live broadcast from the Marconi Company’s site in Chelmsford, Essex. Whilst she was not the first person to broadcast her voice, Dame Nellie was the first professional singer,…

  • The “Roseberry Stag”, a local exponent of pedestrianism

    The “Roseberry Stag”, a local exponent of pedestrianism

    The “Roseberry Stag” was the nom de guerre assumed by Thomas Glasper of Stokesley. He was a “Ped”, an exponent of competitive walking or pedestrianism. He seemed to have had a short lived career. In April 1848, he ran against “T. Kitching of Yarm over 120 yards, for £5 a side … at the Nelson…

  • Daffs on Little Roseberry

    Daffs on Little Roseberry

    I came across this little clump of daffodils on Little Roseberry. Way off the path. Curious to know how they got there. Seems an arbitrary place to have been planted. But how would the seeds have got up here? I have often wondered if our pre-historic ancestors climbed Roseberry. It must be assumed they did…

  • Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

    Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

    And we’re into May. From the Latin ‘Maius’, the Italic goddess, daughter of Faunus and wife of Vulcan. Mayday was a traditional day in Yorkshire farming practices when agricultural tenancies were changed, “the spring crops being likewise sown by the outgoing tenant, and valued with the wheat“, and “stock are turned into pasture grounds ……

  • What’s in a name?

    What’s in a name?

    It must be at least a week since I’ve posted a photo of Roseberry Topping. My inference, a few days ago, that the name ‘Roseberry’ was derived from a personal name (well, OK, the name of a god) was challenged. I thought it common knowledge, perhaps it needs an explanation. It was put to me…

  • Sexism in the office in the 20th century

    Sexism in the office in the 20th century

    After the Susan Everard murder and subsequent vigil on Clapham Common, I realised I had never really given that much thought to women’s experience both of sexism, but in particular, their vulnerability to men’s violence. I was brought up in the 50s/60s and fortunately had little experience of outright misogyny. I do remember the teenage…