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 these trees once lay a thriving patch of North Yorkshire rural life.

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 village—an echo of a time when the landlord demanded order, for order meant control. Hawnby is a village divided: the upper settlement here on the heights, and the lower one by the Rye, once the domain of the mill, joined by a steep, wooded lane hemmed in by high, watchful hedges.

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 a brief and curious chapter of industrial ambition. Built and operated between 1817 and 1838 by Otley & Lightbody, these kilns fed on a small, impure seam of limestone that ran beneath the moor"Industrial Sites in Cleveland: supplementary list 2".

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 buses to Stokesley or Ingleby Greenhow, their laughter echoing through the valley. Today, it also serves as a book bank, a place where stories are shared as freely as the wind moves across the moors.

Staithes clings to the North Yorkshire cliffs like a stubborn barnacle, its narrow alleys and huddled cottages whispering tales of smugglers, storms, and shipwrecks. Once a modest “staith” — a landing place for Seaton, a settlement mentioned in the Domesday Book — the village grew around its tiny harbour, its people as resilient as the rocks beneath their feet"Parishes: Hinderwell". A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2.

Only when the sea has receded at low tide can one safely pick a path along the foot of the cliffs at Brackenberry Wyke. Here lie the ghostly remains of the old ironstone workings, where men once hacked at the exposed seams before hauling their spoil through an adit to join the great warren of tunnels beneath Port Mulgrave. From there, the ore made its way to the harbour and the waiting ships that fed an empire’s hunger for iron.

A blocked road just north of Helmsley forced us into a long and meandering detour on our way to Bonfield Ghyll. Still, it offered the consolation of fresh glimpses of familiar country. This is Breck House in upper Bransdale, a solid stone-built Moors farmhouse dating to after 1850. Yet an estate survey from 1782 records a 122-acre farmstead here, then called Birk House and owned by a John Brown.

Netle Hole: Two modest parcels of woodland lie beside Cliff Ridge Wood, gifted to the National Trust in 1991 by Lady Fry for the princely sum of ten poundsNettle Hole Wood, Great Ayton - 1.90ha (4.70 acres). A bargain, one might say, for a place that now looks splendid in autumn, its beech saplings blazing away where once nettles ruled.

Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain Cook’s Monument was raised on the hill beyond? The answer, perhaps, lies in the slow, relentless creep of those pale crusts clinging to the stone.

I set out this morning hoping to capture a clear view of the mound on Roseberry’s western slope, formed by the landslip of May 1912. The result was underwhelming; the photograph failed to do justice to the defining shape of the old slump. During the second week of that May, a great section of Roseberry’s exposed rock face gave way and slid down towards Newton Wood.

Urra. A name that sounds as if the wind itself whispered it across the moor. Once, according to Richard Blakeborough, this lonely hamlet in upper Bilsdale had a blacksmith and an inn – the twin hearts of any small communityPassim: Elfi The Dwarf — The Story Told at Ye Sign of the Fox & Hounds, Urra.

The River Almond begins its quiet journey in North Lanarkshire, winding eastwards until it slips, almost unnoticed, into the Firth of Forth at Cramond. But just before it meets the tide, the Almond performs one last act of theatre. Its course cuts through a steep, wooded gorge where oak, beech and sycamore crowd the banks, and the ghosts of industry linger.

A sweeping view of Scotland’s most iconic bridges, taken from the charming town of South Queensferry—a place where steel, stone, and centuries meet across the Firth of Forth. It is tempting to drift into the story of how these mighty spans were built, but today the real fascination lies not in iron and rivets, but in something far older: the humble ferry that gave the town its name.

Into the Scottish Borders, and to Peniel Heugh—a modest hill of 237 metres, though it carries itself as if it were Everest. It is, I am told, a volcanic plug of olivine microgabbro, which sounds far grander than the dark lump it appears to be above the village of Ancrum. At its summit stands the Waterloo Monument, a 150-foot column of whinstone so extravagant it could only have been dreamt up by a Marquess.

I had always imagined Kielder reservoir as an endless supply of water, vast and untouchable. So when I saw it shrunken, its shoreline drawn back to reveal the bones beneath, it was a bit of a shock. There, exposed after decades under the surface, lay the embankment of a forgotten railway that once wound its way up this lonely valley.

The ruined Dally Castle in Northumberland sits on its grassy knoll like the ghost of a forgotten age. Only low walls and scattered stones remain, but they hint at a place that once surveyed the countryside with authority. The information board, in its pedantic way, insists that Dally was never a true castle at all. Yet fact seldom stands a chance against folklore.

From Gisborough Moor, Highcliff Nab rises starkly above the Cleveland Plain, and it is easy to imagine the lives of its earliest visitors, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who roamed here during six millennia before 4000 BC — long before Stonehenge was even thought about. Highcliff Nab is recognised as a key site of Early Mesolithic activity, dating back to about 8500 BC.

About a mile north of Silton, on the steep flank of Thimbleby Banks, stands a curious mass of stone known as the Hanging Stone. It is a great angular block of coarse grit, so boldly poised that it seems to hover in mid-air. Were it not hidden by the thick wood below, one might spend a puzzled hour wondering why it has not long since tumbled into the valley.

Every autumn, we perform our favorite ritual of self-sabotage: we change the clocks and then act surprised when our bodies protest. The great “extra hour of sleep” myth returns, while our circadian systems quietly implode. And tonight’s the night, as the clocks are about to jump back, our bodies will begin their hormonal bedtime symphony. Melatonin started whispering, “Time to sleep,” while we stare at phone screens, basically screaming “Nope!” in blue light wavelengths.

High above the village of Over Silton, recent felling has exposed cliffs that rear up like the broken ramparts of some forgotten fortress, appropriately named The Scarrs. Here lies a cleft in the r…

An Archimedes Screw, housed in a green and white casing, tames the restless waters of Bonfield Gill. The view looks upstream, where the beck threads through a small patch of woodland dominated by birch. Autumn has arrived with its full painter’s palette: russet bracken, lush green grasses, and a mossy tree stump that seems to have been there since the Flood.

Another view of Low House in Westerdale, this time from the south-east. As mentioned yesterday, this was once the home of John Fairfax-Blakeborough, folklorist, writer, and stalwart of old Cleveland. Major John Fairfax-Blakeborough (1883–1976) first saw the light of day in Guisborough on 16 January 1883. Known as Jack, he was the son of Richard Blakeborough, the celebrated Cleveland folklorist. By sixteen he was already in print, contributing to the Northern Weekly Gazette, whose articles later appeared in the Whitby Gazette.

Castleton Rigg is one of those places everyone knows from the car window yet almost no one bothers to walk upon. I can remember only two previous visits, one before and one after the arrival of that monstrous vanity project masquerading as public art (here and here). Today’s visit offered then the chance to look down upon the elongated hamlet of Westerdaleside, close enough to Westerdale to share its weather, yet distinct in its history.

Autumn colours never repeat themselves. Some years they dazzle, others they merely please, yet always they seem above the average. This season the woods and commons are blaze with bronze oaks, copper beeches, flashes of yellow, and the odd scarlet sentinel. Only the ash stands bare and grey, its leaves long gone. Even the bracken and brambles join the spectacle, lending the scene a grandeur touched by melancholy—the beauty of decline.

A view along Boltby Scar, on the western edge of Hambleton Down, where the wind brushes across an Iron Age promontory fort and ancient round barrowsBoltby Scar promontory fort and two round barrows. List Entry Number: 1013086. Historic England. Beneath them lies a long-abandoned limestone quarry, silent now, but once echoing with the clang of hammers and the groan of wagons.