Category: North York Moors

  • Cable Stone Crag

    Cable Stone Crag

    I can’t believe it’s getting on for 4 years since I last visited Low Cable Stone, or Cable Stone Crag as I’ve titled this post, a name I picked up from a 19th-century account of a foxhunt in which “a bag fox” was released and “pulled down within twenty minutes”. Twenty minutes of cruelty but…

  • Happy days are here again

    Happy days are here again

    🎶Happy days are here again The skies above are clear again So let’s sing a song of cheer again Happy times, happy nights Happy days are here again🎶 Quiz question: who was the Britain’s worst prime Minister? I’ll give you a clue: he was educated at both Eton and Oxford. The answer is Sir Anthony…

  • Erica cinerea

    Erica cinerea

    The moors will soon be a profusion of lilac with the blooming of the Ling, but for several weeks now the deeper purple blaze of Bell heather has been taking the glory. This swathe of Bell heather is the largest I’ve seen. Normally it prefers to grow in small clumps on drier ground, the tops…

  • ‘The Ancient British Druidical Logan or Rocking Stone‘

    ‘The Ancient British Druidical Logan or Rocking Stone‘

    A couple of weeks ago I posted about the ‘Immense Landslip’ of 1872 on White Hill. And in that post I quoted from a newspaper article which suggesting paying a visit to ‘The Ancient British Druidical Logan or Rocking Stone‘ when viewing the landslip; ‘only distant a few hundred yards‘. I racked my brain trying to…

  • Blakey Topping standing stones

    Blakey Topping standing stones

    Could this group of standing stones be the remains of a stone circle? Although only three stones are visible in the photo, there is certainly a fourth in an old field bank and one source says a fifth, although I didn’t spot either of these. In addition there are two or three hollows in the…

  • Another sunny morning, but a tad windy on the Topping

    Another sunny morning, but a tad windy on the Topping

    “Trace in the sky the painter’s brush — Then winds around you soon will rush” The last few days have dawned with blue skies and a smattering of cirrus clouds. High wispy cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals and usually portend an approaching depression from the west and the associated deterioration of the weather.…

  • Lord of the Flies

    Lord of the Flies

    Fields of barley on Bousdale Hill golding under the Summer sun. OK, I made that word up. Gilding? Goldening? I was trying to find a link with William Golding, Nobel Prize awardee in Literature in 1983, knighted in 1988, and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, who died on this day, 19 June, 1993…

  • Farndale

    Farndale

    Whenever I see Farndale, my imagination is drawn not to its famous swathes of daffodils in the Spring but to what the dale would look like if Hull Corporation had had its way and built its proposed reservoir. The scheme was first mooted in the 1932, when the Corporation began negotiations to purchase 2,000 acres…

  • The Great Landslip of 1872

    The Great Landslip of 1872

    A hill of many names, Cushat Hill, White Hill, Clay Hill. According to the first O.S. Map published in 1857, the prominence is White Hill, the lower part of the road climb is Clay Hill Bank, and the upper part Cushat Hill. Just to be clear, Hasty Bank is the south face. The road of…

  • Low Bride Stones

    Low Bride Stones

    150 million years ago, as the Jurassic seas advanced and retreated, rocks of differing densities were laid down on the sea bed with a hard gritstone laying over softer sandstones. The sandstone under the  weathered more easily resulting in these fascinating tors. A myth that is often quoted is of a petrified bridal party that…