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Gallow How: Where Danby Meets Westerdale
On Thursday the first of August 1907, Danby staged its customary ‘Riding the Boundary’, a grand ritual meant to affirm the limits of the Manor, and by extension the Parish, while also paying annual homage to the Lord of the Manor, Hugh Richard, Viscount Downe. The bailiff opened the day with a ringing “Oyez, Oyez,…
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Snow on the Ruins of Cote Garth
The ruined farms hidden beneath the forestry east of Cod Beck Reservoir sit like half-forgotten whispers of a tougher age. Among them, Cote Garth stands out, its broken walls sharp against the last scraps of the recent snowfall, as though the land itself is determined to remind us that someone once fought wind, rain and…
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Winter Transforms the Village
Fresh snow arrived over night and dressed the village with the sort of delicate filigree that flatters every scene. Even the drabbest view has been turned into something fit for a gallery. This is Station Road, usually choked with parked cars, this morning quiet and softened so completely that the few vehicles present appear to…
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Solitude on Roseberry
The summit of Roseberry lay in an uncanny hush this morning, hidden beneath a dense veil of cloud that turned the familiar rocks into something resembling a far-off alpine mountain. The first snow of winter was still drifting down in slow, wavering flakes, a little damp but enthralling nonetheless. The whole scene felt charged with…
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Coate Moor, Larches
A view from the top of Coate Moor towards the head of Kildale, an obsequent valley biting back into the Cleveland escarpment. The glacial upheaval forced the River Leven to scour a narrow gorge through the shales and sandstones below Coate Moor. I have posted about this before. But Kildale has another, somewhat obscure, point…
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God Rays over Ayton Banks
On Roseberry this morning, a well-built young chap, kitted out as if he had sprinted straight from a gym in Middlesbrough, greeted me with a cheery “Aarite, lad? Beautiful up ’ere today, init? Better than last Mondee, eh?”. His words rather floored me, not only for his unexpected use of “beautiful” but because I would…
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The Lost Path of Jackdaw Crag
Just along the coast from where the Cleveland Way passes by the mineral railway, far too close to the shear drop for comfort, past the Charm Bracelet sculpture the cliff becomes deceptively less steep. Here walkers might breath a sigh of relief. Yet somewhere below, hidden from view, lies Jackdaw Crag, no doubt once favoured…
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Toad in the Hole
How thoughtful the keepers appear to be, fashioning what looks like a charming wildlife pond in the middle of the grouse moor. A touching gesture, if one overlooks the small detail that this idyllic pool is also a shooting butt where folk crouch, lie in wait, and unleash a storm of shot at birds driven…
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The Bottom End of Castleton, Where a Door Closed…
I had been leafing through Joseph Ford’s “Some Reminiscences and Folk Lore of Danby Parish and District”, when one small passage stopped me in my tracks. Ford described the steady trickle of those who slipped away from the Esk Valley in the nineteenth century, chasing whispers of a new life across the ocean. Among them…
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Clearing the Blackthorn: The Mother of the Woods Fights Back
A grey, soaking day settles over the National Trust property at Port Mulgrave. Rain drips from every branch and bramble. The task at hand: cutting back the blackthorn regrowth that is threatening to re-swallow the public footpath through a tangle of unyielding woodland. Far below, the North Sea heaves and claws at the base of…
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