Crummock Water And its Tombolo On the west shore of Crummock Water sits a small oddity that likes to keep a low profile. It is said to be the only example of its kind in the Lake District, which is no small boast for a strip of stones. This feature is a “tombolo”, a gravel beach about 50 metres…

The Slow Making of Buttermere and Crummock Water That flat sweep of rich green pasture is not there by chance. It sits on the land bridge between Buttermere and Crummock Water, quietly doing the job of keeping the two lakes apart. It was built by a geological feature known as a fan-delta, courtesy…

Aitkin Knott and Keskadale A sweeping, high-angle view drops into Keskadale, better known as the Newlands Valley, seen from the brown, heathered spine of Ard Crags. At the end of the ridge sits the small knoll of Aitken Knott. Here Earl Ackin, a leading Norse-Cumbrian lord and brother of Earl…

Great Ayton’s Boxing Day Ritual: Auf Wiedersehen? In 2004, hunting foxes with dogs was banned. This did not, however, end the “sport”. It merely trimmed it back and left three flavours of “hunting” on the menu. First comes trail hunting. This involves following a scent of animal urine laid on a…

Merry Mōdraniht Christmas seems to arrive earlier every year. This Christmas Eve the summit was packed to the rafters. This view follows the line of the old ironstone tramway. Now labelled a Permissive Path, it runs alongside the Public Bridleway that is Aireyholme Lane and is largely ignored, so…

Houchen’s leadership of the Tees Valley has been characterised by vanity projects and systemic governance failures that have left public bodies with over £520m in debt.

Witches’ Butter Even in midwinter, when the woods look like they have given up, they can still manage a bit of a show. There are splashes of colour if you bother to look. Bright fungi flare up against the gloom, set among the stubborn brown leaves still clinging to oak and beech, and the thick…

A Glimpse of a Windhover Despite spending at least two hours outdoors on most days, close meetings with nature are thin on the ground. There is the odd distant view, a brief flicker at the edge of sight, usually gone before my patience can catch up. My bird identification skills are basic, but…

Billy’s Dyke on the High Moor Just after the midwinter feast of 1070, William the Conqueror, fresh from Christmas in York, marched north to settle a score. His garrison at Durham had been slaughtered, and he meant to answer blood with fire. What followed was ruin on a grand scale. Villages, farms,…

A Long View from Cockle Scar Scar, scarp and escarpment have a knack for muddling people. The landforms overlap, and to add to the fun a scarp can carry several scars on its own back. Despite how they look, scar is not related to the other two. It comes from the Old Norse “sker”, meaning crag,…

Roseberry Watching Over Enclosed Land The nearest field in today’s photograph marks the site of the old farmstead of Summerhill, born out of Great Ayton’s enclosure of the common land in 1658. At that time, the commons stretched all the way to the top of Roseberry, open and shared in a way that…

Commondale and the Forgotten Potters of the Home Front Commondale is a quiet village now, the sort that seems still half asleep by mid-morning. It was not always like this. The arrival of the railway changed everything. A brickworks followed, then a pottery, turning out objects of real quality.…

The orange colouring of this stream is a clear sign of iron salts in abundance. This is known as chalybeate or ferruginous water, a substance once held in high esteem in the 17th century when mineral waters were treated as a cure for most known ailments and ... www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/15/c...

The Lady Chapel The precise beginnings of this agreeable little chapel tucked into the trees are lost to time, which is how such places like it. What we do know is that by 1397 a licence had been granted for Mass to be said here, neatly separating it from the later Mount Grace Priory, the…

Lost Without Moving: Britain’s Wandering North A cracking morning. This view looks north-east from Newton Moor, over Guisborough, out to the North Sea and whatever lies beyond it, behaving impeccably for once. “Grid to mag, add; mag to grid, get rid” is the sort of mnemonic that lodges in the…

Solstice Greetings from Oakdale Forty years ago, sending and receiving Christmas cards felt like a rite of passage, a quiet signal that one had stepped into adulthood and set up house. Some even embraced the annual letter, chronicling the family triumphs and tribulations for distant friends and…

Crimson Herald of the Coming Sun This is a novelty for this long-suffering blog: a photograph taken from my very own doorstep, with sunrise still twenty minutes off and the sky already plotting its little drama. Most people know the old saying about the red sky and the fortunes of sailors, with…

The “T” Stones of Bilsdale West Moor The North York Moors are littered with boundary stones, each one usually stamped with a dutiful little initial, the sort of thing an aristocratic landowner might choose when feeling terribly important. An “M” for Manners, an “F” for Feversham, a “CD” for…

The Scar on the Hill: Cliff Rigg Quarry A dreich veil hung over North Yorkshire this morning, so I look back instead to yesterday, when the sky was clear, the air still, and the sun at least toyed with the idea of shining. Cliff Rigg Quarry looms above Great Ayton, a cavernous rent in the hillside…

Glaisdale’s Brief Age of Iron Glaisdale began life as a quiet township within the parish of Danby, its name shifting through the centuries as Glasedale and Glacedale. Records from 1223 already linked it with the broad sweep of Glaisdale Moor, giving a sense of a place long settled into its…

Glaisdale and the Enigma of T. H. Some two hundred yards up from the foot of the lane that strains its way up Caper Hill, a dry-stone wall is built around a large orthostat. Rough-hewn at the edges and smoothed across its face, it carries a message cut by hand in the late seventeenth century.…

Scarth Nick and the Making of a Landscape Scarth Nick, a dry trench bordered by steep banks of bracken and heather, stands as a striking reminder of the fierce sculpting of the great Ice Age. Around fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, a glacier from the north spread across the vale of Cleveland…

Before Satellites Spoilt the Fun: The Rise of Triangulation Trig points cling to hilltops like relics from a time when humans trusted metal and masonry rather than shining toys orbiting the earth. This one on Roseberry’s summit keeps being repainted in traditional white, only to be graffited again…

A Heart over The Ship Inn Is that a heart floating above The Ship Inn at Old Saltburn. Charming. The pilot must have been struck by a fit of sentiment, or perhaps simply bored stiff. Back in the eighteenth century this tiny fishing village beneath Huntcliff and the ever-so-subtle Cat Nab managed…

Cloud Duvet over the Cleveland Hills The morning sky was as clear as one could hope for December, though the Cleveland Hills had chosen to hide beneath a bank of cloud. One could call it an orographic cloud, if one wished to sound as if one had paid attention in geography lessons. The term comes…

Barningham Moor Barningham Moor lies high in the Northern Dales between the Ure, Swale and Tees, a stretch of upland that most travellers notice only as a vague rise on the horizon while speeding along the A66. I have passed it for years without realising there was anything remarkable up there at…

December Arrives and Haws for the Birds And so we stumble into December, once the proud tenth month of a Roman calendar designed by people who thought it wise to leave sixty days of winter adrift like sheep in a snow drift. Eventually they realised this was a fool’s errand, tacked on January and…

A Quarter Century of the Right to Roam, More or Less Today brings a double milestone for those in England and Wales who find the open air rather more enticing than the sofa. It is twenty-five years since the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 marched through Parliament and twenty years since…

Paths on the Map but not on the Ground This boundary stone on Great Ayton Moor stands on its highest point as though it has nothing better to do than provide a focus to anyone passing by. A glance at the O.S. map shows this top lies on a junction of a Public Bridleway between Gribdale and Hutton,…

Winter Colour beyond Gribdale Gate A photograph dominated by bracken in its dry, reddish-brown winter state. From Gribdale Gate, the narrow road winds down beside the beck which marks the parish boundary between Great Ayton and Kildale. In the shadowed south side of the dale, the conifers of Coate…

The Cleveland Way: A Slow March Into The Sea One from Tuesday’s little jaunt to Whitby. I had fancied a stroll along the coastal path to Saltwick, though the weather had other ideas. A mischievous wind and a steady parade of squalls were doing their utmost to suggest that I might prefer to remain…

The Tofts and the Wandels: Echoes of the Deserted MedievalVillage of Danby One of the most striking features of Danby Dale is its parish church, standing rather alone about three kilometres from the present village. Castleton and Ainthorpe sit a little closer, yet the church remains a solitary…

Whitby’s East Cliff A rare chance to wander through the nooks and crannies of Whitby, where every turn seems to ooze history. This view from the curiously named Kyber Pass looks across the Esk towards the jumble of red-roofed houses that appear to cling for dear life to the crumbling East Cliff.…

Echoes from the Old Workings beneath Cliff Rigg In 1894 the Northern Echo carried a grim report of a inquest into a fatality in a whinstone quarry near Nettle Hole, a place that sits a good fifty metres below any workings that make sense on a modern mapTHE AYTON QUARRY FATALITIES. Northern Echo -…

Little Roseberry and an Echo of Old Norse From this viewpoint on Ryston Bank the knoll of Little Roseberry takes on a presence rather more commanding than its shy appearance on the O.S. Map, where it is denied even a ring contour. If the name Roseberry grew out of “Othenesberg”, the Old Norse for…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

God Rays over Ayton Banks On Roseberry this morning, a weld-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…

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,…

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…

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 tracksSome Reminiscences and Folk Lore of Danby Parish and District by JOSEPH FORD. HORNE & SON…

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 has swallowed the public footpath through a tangle of…

High Hazel Heads Hidden deep in a dark conifer plantation, where Goldcrests tweet high among the needles — or so I was told, an old man’s hearing failing to pick up the high frequencies — lies the forgotten farmstead of High Hazel Heads. Few come here now, and fewer still would guess that beneath…

Echoes over the Rye: The Now and Then of Hawnby Perched high above the River Rye, on a lonely spur between moorland becks, stands the village of Hawnby. On a damp November morning, its muted greens melt into the hills around it. With houses dressed in matching tones, it has the look of an estate…

The Northernmost Kilns: Commondale’s Forgotten Industry A view up the narrow valley of Commondale, taken from the weathered lime kilns that still cling to the slopes above Coble Hall. Crumbling and defiant, I reckon they must be the most northerly kilns in the North York Moors, silent witnesses to…

Under the Beech: Kildale’s Tribute to the Fallen of WW2 In the quiet heart of Kildale stands this modest stone shelter. Walkers on the Cleveland Way pause here to rest, unwrap their sandwiches, and watch the rain fall. Each morning, local children gather beneath its roof, waiting for the school…