Category: North York Moors
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Sowerdale
I read in the proceedings of the Cleveland Naturalists’ Field Club 1903-1904 a hypothesis that at the time of the last ice age a lake existed in Kildale trapped by a great ice sheet, a thousand feet thick, flowing down the Tees valley from Stainmoor Gap. I was aware of such an ice lake in…
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Disused sandstone quarry, Easby Bank
I heard somewhere that there is evidence of twelve sandstone quarries along the escapement between Capt. Cook’s Monument and Roseberry Topping. The stone gained from these quarries would have been used for buildings in villages and farms down in the vale of Cleveland and for the miles of drystone walls that divide the moors. This…
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Côte de Grosmont
A trip out to watch the Tour de Yorkshire. By the time the riders began the 4th Classified Climb at Grosmont, there was a break in the showers. The “Côte de Grosmont” is not long, only 500m but a gradient of 15% makes it a tough little climb. Amid a cacophony, Team INEOS, in their…
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Kirby Bank
Playing with the panoramic function on my phone. This is looking back on the climb up Cringle Moor. A rather dull drizzly morning brightened by the fields of rape in the Vale of Cleveland. The fence has a bit of history. It is on the line of the old boundary between two Lords. James Emerson,…
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Upper Farndale
Perhaps the most peaceful of the North York Moors dales. That is after the short daffodil season is over and even then this high up the dale is rarely visited. It could all have been so different if the Kingston upon Hull Corporation had had its way. It brought 2,000 hectares of upper Farndale in…
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Bluebells, Newton Wood
It’s that time of the year, the bluebells of Newton Wood. They seem a bit early, it was 10 May last year when I posted my photo. A dull morning with a touch of drizzle but clouds beginning to clear after lunch. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Shed skin of an adder
On Bridestones Moor near Dalby Forest. Find of the day a sloughed or shed skin of an adder, a process which snakes regularly need to do. Such a find would have once been of some value as it was believed that it had healing powers. Cast off snake skins were once used by labourers as…
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Mark’s-e’en watch
A warm, beautiful morning but very hazy, not conducive at all for distant landscape photographs. All the colours end up being washed out. It must be all this Sarahan sand. Tomorrow, April 25, is the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist which makes today St Mark’s Eve when it was the custom to sit…
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Nether Silton
Some recent felling in Silton Wood on the western flanks of the Hambleton Hills has opened up this view from Crabtree Bank. Hunter’s Hill Farm and the pasture fields of Nether Silton, with Kepwick beyond. The last of the light before the sun sank too low and the remaining blue skies clouded over. Open Space…
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Cliff Rigg and Roseberry
A view from Ayton Bank. On the right, Roseberry Topping, “Cleveland’s Matterhorn”, a glacial outlier, the remains of a spur of the moors eroded away by the last ice advance from the north-west as the ice, hundreds of metres thick, met the bulk of the high moors. Cliff Rigg, on the left, has a slightly…