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Mesolithic Guisborough
I often stand on a viewpoint and wonder what the landscape before me was like in times past. What did our ancestors, standing on this same spot see? More often, my imagination struggles to extend beyond the past century. A millennium past and it becomes hazy and obscure. Eight millennia, I can only reach in…
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Track To Summer Hill
I’ve lived in the area for almost fifty years and there are still footpaths I’ve never trodden. I’ve known about this Right of Way but I’ve never bothered with it. For me, getting to the start would entail a kilometre or so of road running, it ends abruptly and doesn’t link up with over routes.…
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A tale of two trods
They say that sheep will blindly follow the sheep in front. It’s part of their gregarious instinct. Yet will they follow the exact same route day after day? For surely this sheep-trod has taken many weeks to develope. And if they do, then they must have a terrific terrain memory. It be wrong to…
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Nanny Howe and the Devil’s Court
A view across Kildale from Park Nab to the densely forested Coate Moor. The highest point towards the left is actually Easby Moor with its monument to Capt. Cook but this story is about a Bronze Age barrow hidden amongst the trees on Coate Moor called Nanny Howe. It’s a story about a witch and…
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“Give us our eleven days”
So the story goes when the Gregorian Calendar was introduced and the 3rd September became the 14th, but it may all have been some satire generated by the artist William Hogarth. The phrase is included in his painting ‘An Election Entertainment‘ (bottom right on a black banner under the foot of a gentlemen who appears…
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A vote to ban ‘trail-hunting’ on National Trust land
Regular readers of this blog will know I volunteer for the National Trust on properties on the North York Moors. I do this principally to give something back to an organisation whose values I fully support. I am not fantastically enthused about old houses and gardens, it is conservation and the natural environment that interest…
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Addacombe Hole
A last look back at the cove and the ruined sheepfold where I had spent the night. Addacombe Hole is really the most spectacular hanging valley. Between Crag Hill and Wandope, it is steep semi-circle of broken sides of crags and scree with a flatish bottom, and a moraine hiding an exceedingly sharp descent to…
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In the Lakes
Manning a checkpoint on the Mountain Trial tomorrow so walking in this afternoon. Can’t tell you where I am, it’s a secret.
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Devoke Water
In the classic Monty Python sketch, John Cleese walks into The Cheese Shop and utters the immortal line: And I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’, so, I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles! The phrase…
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Mediobogdum
The ‘Cohors IV Delmatarum‘ (4th Cohort of Dalmatae) were tough mountain men from the Adriatic coast of the eastern Mediterranean. It is thought the Roman auxiliary regiment was involved in the invasion of Britain in 43 AD and again suppressing the insurgency led by Boudicca. Eventually peace descended on the southern half of Britannia but…
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