#clevelandhills — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #clevelandhills, aggregated by home.social.
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Who Gets the Land? Everyone Wants a Piece
Britain has a land problem. There is not enough of it, what there is in the wrong place, and far too many people want it for far too many things — housing, food, energy, nature, and apparently shooting birds for fun. The Government has finally noticed and published its first Land Use Framework: a long-term plan to stop ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/23/who-gets-the-land-everyone-wants-a-piece/
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Cloudfall
Up on the moors above Greenhow Botton today, where the Cleveland Hills were doing their best impression of a waterfall in the clouds. The kind of view that makes the uphill pedal entirely worth it. Just another quiet Wednesday on the North York Moors.
At the head of the valley lies Midnight Corner, which never sees sunlight in the depth of winter becaus ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/04/cloudfall/
#ClevelandHills #InglebyGreenhow #NorthYorkMoors #etymology #history
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Cold Moor: A Close Brush with Industry
Cold Moor today looks like the sort of place that looks as though history slipped it by. Green, quiet, and peaceful. You would never guess how close it came to becoming a roaring industrial scar.
In 1911 the calm nearly ended. Plans were laid to turn this part of Lord Feversham’s vast es ...http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/27/cold-moor-a-close-brush-with-industry/
#ClevelandHills #ColdMoor #NorthYorkMoors #20thCentury #history #IronstoneMining
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Gribdale Gate and the Edge of the Ice
A view from Cliff Rigg looking across to Gribdale Gate and Easby Moor, where the monument to Captain James Cook stands like a stubborn finger pointing at the sky. It is a landscape that seems quiet until you realise how much has happened here while human ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/24/gribdale-gate-and-the-edge-of-the-ice/
#CaptCooksMonument #ClevelandHills #CliffRigg #EasbyMoor #Gribdale #NorthYorkMoors #geological #history #prehistoric
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The Quiet Side of the Wainstones
Folklore has a habit of latching itself to a place, especially when the landscape looks as if it has something to answer for. A strange rock, an awkward slope, a stone where no stone ought to be, and the human mind gets to work, explaining things up with a story.
Few landmarks on the North York Moors do this better than th ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/07/the-quiet-side-of-the-wainstones/
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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 from the Greek oros for mountain, which is rather generous for the Cleveland Hill ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/03/cloud-duvet-over-the-cleveland-hills/
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A Mystery Beneath our Feet on Cold Moor
Last Sunday, the weather gods allowed a final memorable spectacle of blue skies over the North York Moors before the autumnal gloom. From the heights of Cold Moor, the view towards the Wainstones was as grand as ever, but my eye was drawn not to the distant crags, but to something ra ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/15/a-mystery-beneath-our-feet-on-cold-moor/
#ClevelandHills #ClevelandWay #CoastToCoast #ColdMoor #NorthYorkMoors #wainstones
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The Twisting Plume of Ingleby Greenhow
A familiar landscape, yet on a still autumnal day in the Vale of Cleveland, when not a single turbine blade so much as twitches, an unexpected sight smudges the view. A solitary plume of smoke twists into the air, unsettling in its beauty, creating a scene both ordinary and strangely unfamiliar.
At first glance, it ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/11/the-twisting-plume-of-ingleby-greenhow/
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Autumn: The Killing Season
Green Bank — not very green on this first day of so-called meteorological autumn. The almanac though insists that autumn does not officially begin for another three weeks, though nature is already ahead of schedule. The harvest is in, or at least half of it, since some yields are reported at a dismal fifty per cent. Mornings arrive wit ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/01/autumn-the-killing-season/
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Autumn: The Killing Season
Green Bank — not very green on this first day of so-called meteorological autumn. The almanac though insists that autumn does not officially begin for another three weeks, though nature is already ahead of schedule. The harvest is in, or at least half of it, since some yields are reported at a dismal fifty per cent. Mornings arrive wit ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/01/autumn-the-killing-season/
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Autumn: The Killing Season
Green Bank — not very green on this first day of so-called meteorological autumn. The almanac though insists that autumn does not officially begin for another three weeks, though nature is already ahead of schedule. The harvest is in, or at least half of it, since some yields are reported at a dismal fifty per cent. Mornings arrive wit ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/01/autumn-the-killing-season/
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Autumn: The Killing Season
Green Bank — not very green on this first day of so-called meteorological autumn. The almanac though insists that autumn does not officially begin for another three weeks, though nature is already ahead of schedule. The harvest is in, or at least half of it, since some yields are reported at a dismal fifty per cent. Mornings arrive wit ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/01/autumn-the-killing-season/
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Autumn: The Killing Season
Green Bank — not very green on this first day of so-called meteorological autumn. The almanac though insists that autumn does not officially begin for another three weeks, though nature is already ahead of schedule. The harvest is in, or at least half of it, since some yields are reported at a dismal fifty per cent. Mornings arrive wit ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/01/autumn-the-killing-season/
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On this Day in 1974 — When Health & Safety Went Mad
Just over fifty years ago, in 1974, I was into my first year of full-time work. Newly settled in North Yorkshire, it may have been then that I first looked down the short, wide dale of Greenhowe, maybe from this very spot, perhaps at this very season, when the ling is beginni ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/31/on-this-day-in-1974-when-health-safety-went-mad/
#ClevelandHills #GreenhowMoor #NorthYorkMoors #20thCentury #history
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“Flobbadob-adob … Weeeeed!”
Sunflowers always remind me of Little Weed from The Flowerpot Men, a television nostalgia from my childhood. She — if that is the right word, given her ambiguous gender and equally uncertain botanical identity — played the role of quiet confidant to Bill and Ben, the babbling flowerpot duo.
Like other daisies, sunflowers are composite bloom ...
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VE Day: 80 Years On
Eighty years have passed since Victory in Europe Day, a moment etched in the collective memory by black-and-white newsreels showing ecstatic crowds flooding the streets of London and other major cities. But away from the capital, in the quieter corners of Cleveland and North Yorkshire, the mood was more restrained — though no less meaningful, filled with ...
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Green Bank: Where the Ice Met its Match
Yesterday’s post about Hagg’s Gate set me off thinking, descending yet another rabbit hole: about the time the last glacier flowed down the Vale of York and slammed into the Cleveland Hills. About the time that ice sheet politely stopped at the hills’ feet. About the time these great north and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/28/green-bank-where-the-ice-met-its-match/
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #GreenBank #NorthYorkMoors #glacial #history
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Green Bank: Where the Ice Met its Match
Yesterday’s post about Hagg’s Gate set me off thinking, descending yet another rabbit hole: about the time the last glacier flowed down the Vale of York and slammed into the Cleveland Hills. About the time that ice sheet politely stopped at the hills’ feet. About the time these great north and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/28/green-bank-where-the-ice-met-its-match/
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #GreenBank #NorthYorkMoors #glacial #history
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Green Bank: Where the Ice Met its Match
Yesterday’s post about Hagg’s Gate set me off thinking, descending yet another rabbit hole: about the time the last glacier flowed down the Vale of York and slammed into the Cleveland Hills. About the time that ice sheet politely stopped at the hills’ feet. About the time these great north and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/28/green-bank-where-the-ice-met-its-match/
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #GreenBank #NorthYorkMoors #glacial #history
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Green Bank: Where the Ice Met its Match
Yesterday’s post about Hagg’s Gate set me off thinking, descending yet another rabbit hole: about the time the last glacier flowed down the Vale of York and slammed into the Cleveland Hills. About the time that ice sheet politely stopped at the hills’ feet. About the time these great north and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/28/green-bank-where-the-ice-met-its-match/
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #GreenBank #NorthYorkMoors #glacial #history
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Green Bank: Where the Ice Met its Match
Yesterday’s post about Hagg’s Gate set me off thinking, descending yet another rabbit hole: about the time the last glacier flowed down the Vale of York and slammed into the Cleveland Hills. About the time that ice sheet politely stopped at the hills’ feet. About the time these great north and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/28/green-bank-where-the-ice-met-its-match/
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #GreenBank #NorthYorkMoors #glacial #history
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Hagg’s Gate, Clay Bank or Whatever it’s Called This Week
Another photograph from yesterday. I am standing on White Hill, the easternmost bump of the so-called Four Sisters of the Cleveland Hills and gazing across the col at Hagg’s Gate, or at least what used to be called Hagg’s Gate, towards Carr Ridge and the high ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/27/haggs-gate-clay-bank-or-whatever-its-called-this-week/
#CarrRidge #ClayBank #ClevelandHills #NorthYorkMoors #WhiteHill #history
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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Sir George the Dragon Slayer
A picturesque bank of cloud hung over the Cleveland Hills this St. George’s Day morning. A reminder that even the sky can be more subtle than patriotic flag-wavers.
St. George’s Day stirs about as much feeling in me as Carlin Sunday, Plough Monday or Hocktide – curious relics of a myth-soaked past, clung to by those desperate to feel part o ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/23/sir-george-the-dragon-slayer/
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Crannimoor: A Hill, a Café, and a Case of a Misplaced Apostrophe
On Cringle or Cringley Moor, or if one wants to sound particularly archaic, Crannimoor. A Victorian writer hailing from the West Riding once claimed this was pronounced “Creenay.” As for its origin, the modern thinking is that it comes from the Old Norse ‘kringla,’ meaning a “circle.” However, the ever-reliable Reverend R. C. At ...
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Crannimoor: A Hill, a Café, and a Case of a Misplaced Apostrophe
On Cringle or Cringley Moor, or if one wants to sound particularly archaic, Crannimoor. A Victorian writer hailing from the West Riding once claimed this was pronounced “Creenay.” As for its origin, the modern thinking is that it comes from the Old Norse ‘kringla,’ meaning a “circle.” However, the ever-reliable Reverend R. C. At ...
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Crannimoor: A Hill, a Café, and a Case of a Misplaced Apostrophe
On Cringle or Cringley Moor, or if one wants to sound particularly archaic, Crannimoor. A Victorian writer hailing from the West Riding once claimed this was pronounced “Creenay.” As for its origin, the modern thinking is that it comes from the Old Norse ‘kringla,’ meaning a “circle.” However, the ever-reliable Reverend R. C. At ...
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Crannimoor: A Hill, a Café, and a Case of a Misplaced Apostrophe
On Cringle or Cringley Moor, or if one wants to sound particularly archaic, Crannimoor. A Victorian writer hailing from the West Riding once claimed this was pronounced “Creenay.” As for its origin, the modern thinking is that it comes from the Old Norse ‘kringla,’ meaning a “circle.” However, the ever-reliable Reverend R. C. At ...
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Crannimoor: A Hill, a Café, and a Case of a Misplaced Apostrophe
On Cringle or Cringley Moor, or if one wants to sound particularly archaic, Crannimoor. A Victorian writer hailing from the West Riding once claimed this was pronounced “Creenay.” As for its origin, the modern thinking is that it comes from the Old Norse ‘kringla,’ meaning a “circle.” However, the ever-reliable Reverend R. C. At ...
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The Cleveland Hills on a Myst-Hakel Morning
I slogged up through the old whinstone quarry, staring at the ground, my thoughts elsewhere. I braced myself to find the usual rubbish left behind by quad bikers, as if the world is their personal skip. I could hear them active yesterday. The frost-covered, sterile earth stretched ahead, with the bikers’ berms and humps standing around like forg ...
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A Slog up Roseberry Topping and a Nod to Pagan Roots
I could claim it was a brisk dash up Roseberry Topping this morning, but in truth, it was more of a plodding trudge. Perhaps it only felt that way because I foolishly dressed for winter, not realising it would be unseasonably warm for Christmas Eve. This is the view from the summit, looking down on Aireyholme ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=37049
#Aireyholme #ClevelandHills #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #EarlyMedieval #history
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A Ruined Shelter, a Romantic Name, and some Random Latin
An opportunistic photograph, captured during a rare moment when the winter sun managed to pierce the unrelenting gloom of an overcast day.
Here I am on Cold Moor—or, if you are feeling fanciful, Mount Vittoria Plantation. I prefer the latter; it has that pretentious 19th-century flair. This narrow strip of hea ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36994
#ClevelandHills #ColdMoor #CringleMoor #MountVittoria #NorthYorkMoors #history
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The Scaur—Musings on Glaciers and Randklufts
I revisited an old stomping ground today—a route I came to know far too well during the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, when it was the only slice of countryside not off-limits. Back then, it was decorated with the charred remains of several burnt-out cars, but these have now been swapped for a battalion of tree guards and their obedient little saplin ...
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The Scaur—Musings on Glaciers and Randklufts
I revisited an old stomping ground today—a route I came to know far too well during the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, when it was the only slice of countryside not off-limits. Back then, it was decorated with the charred remains of several burnt-out cars, but these have now been swapped for a battalion of tree guards and their obedient little saplin ...
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The Scaur—Musings on Glaciers and Randklufts
I revisited an old stomping ground today—a route I came to know far too well during the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, when it was the only slice of countryside not off-limits. Back then, it was decorated with the charred remains of several burnt-out cars, but these have now been swapped for a battalion of tree guards and their obedient little saplin ...
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The Scaur—Musings on Glaciers and Randklufts
I revisited an old stomping ground today—a route I came to know far too well during the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, when it was the only slice of countryside not off-limits. Back then, it was decorated with the charred remains of several burnt-out cars, but these have now been swapped for a battalion of tree guards and their obedient little saplin ...
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The Scaur—Musings on Glaciers and Randklufts
I revisited an old stomping ground today—a route I came to know far too well during the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, when it was the only slice of countryside not off-limits. Back then, it was decorated with the charred remains of several burnt-out cars, but these have now been swapped for a battalion of tree guards and their obedient little saplin ...
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An Overlooked Old Quarry on Scarth Wood Moor
What a difference from yesterday morning, with super lighting on Scarth Wood Moor.
Here we have a disused sandstone quarry, now absorbed into the landscape, grazed by sheep and cattle. According to the National Park Heritage Records, it dates to the early 19th century. Meanwhile, the National Trust, who actually own the moor, app ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36875
#ClevelandHills #NorthYorkMoors #ScarthWoodMoor #NationalTrust #quarry
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From Beck Hills to the Cotswolds: A Tale of Unequal Farming
Cringle Moor, as seen from Cold Moor across the eastern sweep of Raisdale. Below sits Beck Hills farm, your archetypal North York Moors operation. According to their website, they mostly breed sheep on 125 acres of valley pasture, with another 300 acres of shared grazing rights on Cold Moor. They have also embra ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36810
#ClevelandHills #CringleMoor #CringleMoor #NorthYorkMoors #Raisdale #farming
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Jackson’s Bank—Medieval Trod
As you reach the top of Jackson’s Bank, it is hard not to imagine that, at the turn of the last century, weary walkers resting upon these boulders were serenaded by the rather pastoral sounds of iron-laden trucks grinding, screeching, and clattering their way down that incline on the opposite side of Greenhow B ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36716
#CarrRidge #ClevelandHills #Greenhow #NorthYorkMoors #20thCentury #history #ironstone #medieval #railway
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Raw Impressions: Cleveland Hills Above a Blanket of Mist
Certainly, nothing whatsoever about this view of the Cleveland Hills evokes the word “recrudescence”—though it is oddly suited to today’s general mood. In the 20th century, “recrudescence” came to signify the reappearance of anything thoroughly unpleasant after a period of respite—war, plague, outrage, crime. The 18th-century meaning was more viscerally sat ...
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Of Clouds and Candle-Rushes: Taxation, Tradition, and a Dreich Brian’s Pond
What a profoundly uninspiring morning it has been—so much dull, grey cloud blanketing the Cleveland Hills that one might have suspected a conspiracy to make photography impossible. Still, in search of a morsel of interest, I plodded resolutely up to Brian’s Pond, which is quite possibly named in honour of that storied ...
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Michaelmas Traditions: From the Devil’s Brambles to Cabbage Wars
One of my favourite sights is the spectacle of a temperature inversion in Bilsdale, when the mist rolls over the Cleveland Hills like a waterfall, spilling into the plain below. Such was the view this morning, on this day of St Michael’s Feast, or Michaelmas.
Michaelmas, celebrated on the 29th of September each year, marks the beginnin ...
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90 Metres of Progress: The Curious Case of a New Bridleway
It is a curious thing, is it not, that the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom, believed they could neatly parcel up the English countryside like so many slices of cake, each path and bridleway served with a side of bureaucracy. Under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, a grand endeavou ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36179
#ClevelandHills #ClevelandWay #CringleMoor #NorthYorkMoors #AccessRights
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Cumulus, Cirrus, and The Cleveland Hills
As I trudged along the escarpment of Great Ayton Moor, my eyes were drawn southwestward, where a rather theatrical display of clouds was being jostled along by an brisk southwesterly wind. My morning walk had started with a few ominous spots of rain, but which was grudgingly giving way to clear skies.
One cannot help but marvel at how often ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36115
#ClevelandHills #GreatAytonMoor #NorthYorkMoors #meteorological
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The Tory Party, 1832-2024
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the Tory Party, beloved overlord, on 5 July 2024 after a long and terminal decline.
The Conservative and Unionist Party was founded in 1832 from an alliance between the Tory and Whig parties to defend the existing order against radical reform. Once widely respected, the party adapted to changes it originally opposed, ult ...