Category: Great Ayton
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Nettle Wood in Autumn’s Glow
Nettle Hole: Two modest parcels of woodland lie beside Cliff Ridge Wood, gifted to the National Trust in 1991 by Lady Fry for the princely sum of ten pounds. A bargain, one might say, for a place that now looks splendid in autumn, its beech saplings blazing away where once nettles ruled. Farmers, of course,…
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The Forgotten Lichenologist of Great Ayton: William Mudd
Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain Cook’s Monument was raised on the hill beyond? The answer,…
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Cliff Rigg Wood: An Old Tramway, a Broken Gate and Echoes of Cook
I thought it worth recording this path while it remains as it is—the bottom one through Cliff Rigg Wood. For posterity, as they say. It is due for “improvement” in the next few weeks, though I am not quite sure what the result will look like. The National Trust, in their grand design to upgrade…
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Aireyholme: The Humble Launchpad of Empire’s Favourite Navigator
From the summit of Roseberry Topping, the Cleveland landscape performs its finest impression of timeless rural charm: undulating green fields stitched together by hedgerows, with Aireyholme Farm sitting unobtrusively in the middle like it’s been dropped there by a distracted cartographer. This was the patch of the country where the young James Cook grew up,…
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Floods, Mills and a Sunday Flush
A flood warning late last night prompted me to wander down the village this morning and along the river. The so-called “waterfall” was in full spate, though hardly dramatic enough to warrant excitement. It is not a waterfall at all, of course, but a weir built in 1840 thanks to local benefactor Thomas Richardson. Its…
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Down among the Thistles
The hedgerows are heavy with the spoils of summer. Blackberries shine darkly in the shade, crab apples blush among the leaves, and Rowan berries hang in bright clusters. Rosebay Willowherb releases its silky seeds to the wind, while the thistles too surrender their down, sending it drifting like smoke across the fields. Thistles are cursed…
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“Flobbadob-adob … Weeeeed!”
Sunflowers always remind me of Little Weed from The Flowerpot Men, a television nostalgia from my childhood. She — if that is the right word, given her ambiguous gender and equally uncertain botanical identity — played the role of quiet confidant to Bill and Ben, the babbling flowerpot duo. Like other daisies, sunflowers are composite…
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The Stone They Left Behind
A rough-cut sandstone block lies abandoned at the top of an old quarry on Ayton Bank. It first appears on the 1915 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map. One wonders what caused the sudden stop—tools downed, the block left where it was, after the time and effort it must have taken to cut it, shape it, and…
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Bombweed, a Hall Built of Basalt and German POWs
The vivid pinks of Rosebay Willowherb blaze across summer landscapes, yet most pass them by. Known as Fireweed, it is often the first plant to reclaim burnt ground. That was not always the case. The Georgians treated it as a rarity, grown in gardens rather than spotted in the wild. Even in 1853, the Reverend…
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VE Day: 80 Years On
Eighty years have passed since Victory in Europe Day, a moment etched in the collective memory by black-and-white newsreels showing ecstatic crowds flooding the streets of London and other major cities. But away from the capital, in the quieter corners of Cleveland and North Yorkshire, the mood was more restrained — though no less meaningful,…