Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #roseberrytopping, aggregated by home.social.
A Crow’s Foot on a Gatepost
The gate itself is nothing to write home about. Seven metal bars, a stone post, the sort of thing you would walk past without a second glance. The gatepost once had a partner, another “stoup” standing guard on the other side, but that would have got hauled out years ago so tractors could squeeze through. Progress, of a sort.
Look closer, ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/07/22/a-crows-foot-on-a-gatepost/
The Squeeze: Roseberry Topping’s Disappearing Footpath
Climbing Roseberry Topping ought to be one of the simple joys in life. Not on this stretch. Here it is a “stinging” ordeal, and no mistake.
A modern post-and-wire fence runs alongside a maturing line of hedge saplings, squeezed in next to the old boundary. They were planted a few years b ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/07/18/the-squeeze-roseberry-toppings-disappearing-footpath/
Ragwort: The Weed That Feeds the Bees
Three heatwaves have hit Britain since spring, baking the ground and warming the seas. Humidity makes it feel worse. Soil has dried fast, wildfire risk is high, and marine life is under strain too. The Met Office, says cooler air is due soon, but rain is not, so dry days continue.
Some plants seem to be thriving. Like these ragw ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/07/15/ragwort-the-weed-that-feeds-the-bees/
Roseberry’s Summerhouse: What Was It For? Nobody Quite Knows
A while has passed since I last posted a photo of Roseberry’s summerhouse.
I call it a summerhouse, though nobody agrees on what this odd building was for. The National Park have stuck a plaque on it calling it a shooting box. Fine, except a sketch by George Cruit puts ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/07/03/roseberrys-summerhouse-what-was-it-for-nobody-quite-knows/
A Northern Harr Brings Fine Weather From Far
I tend to avoid Roseberry on Sunday mornings but those that made the effort today might have witnessed two seasons colliding. The summit sat in sunshine. Below, the vale of Guisborough disappeared under a slow grey tide rolling in off the North Sea — a sea fret, and it has been catching the Yorkshire coast off g ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/06/21/a-northern-harr-brings-fine-weather-from-far/
Phase 2 of Roseberry’s Facelift Begins
Last week, the powers that be helicoptered huge black bags of stone and gravel onto the south flank of Roseberry Topping, ready for this year’s phase of its major path upgrading. I have been anxious to see the progress.
To the left of the leftmost foxglove, the bridleway, after climbing up from the Folly field, cont ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/06/15/phase-2-of-roseberrys-facelift-begins/
Before the Path Gets Upgraded
Yesterday I climbed Roseberry Topping with no firm ideas, but found one on the way down. This worn path down the southeast flank is scheduled for upgrading. Not this year, perhaps, but soon enough. I wanted a record of it as it is.
The path along the fence line — the one the solitary walker in the red jacket is treading — is earmarked ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/16/before-the-path-gets-upgraded/
A New View, a New Mudd.e
The recent clear felling of a block of forestry in Ayton Banks Wood has opened up a new view of Roseberry. The commercial timber has gone, leaving a few gangly birch trees to stand guard over the valley. It turns out that Gribdale Terrace, that isolated row of white cottages, has a history which is a bit of a muddle.
One academic maintains that thes ...
Kirby Bank — A Hill With a Past
Bluebells pour down the sun-baked flank of Kirby Bank above the plain of Cleveland. Gorse burns yellow across the slopes. Below, the white walls of the Pybus Scout Centre gleam in the spring light. Beyond the green patchwork of fields, Roseberry Topping rises on the far hor ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/01/kirby-bank-a-hill-with-a-past/
#Kirby #KirkbyinCleveland #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #18thcentury #alum #history #medieval #monastic
The Last of the Lords
Roseberry Topping, North Yorkshire, 29 April 2026 — a perfect English spring morning. Out there, bluebells. In Westminster, history.
Today, the current Parliament ended. And with that, seven centuries of hereditary peers sitting in the House of Lords came to a quiet end.
No fanfare. No farewell parade. Just the music stopping.
The story begins in 1999, whe ...
The Pimps of Roseberry
Today’s photo is, of course, of Roseberry Topping. That dry stone wall running up the slope marks the boundary between the parishes of Newton-under-Roseberry and Great Ayton. Before the great landslip of 1912 it ran all the way to the summit.
Looking at a photograph taken before 1912, you can see vegetated ground running right to the ba ...
2001: A Foot and Mouth Odyssey
25 years ago, in 2001, the country fell into an eerie stillness. Across the countryside, the "smell of death" drifted from funeral pyres as millions of animals were burned, transforming green fields into a "gigantic charnel house". What began as a livestock disease quickly became a national trauma, exposing how frag ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/20/2001-a-foot-and-mouth-odyssey/
#CliffRigg #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #history #NationalTrust
From Parish Wall to Prime Minister
Despite the slush and the grey skies, snow lends even the most familiar ground a quiet grandeur. Roseberry Topping, half veiled in white, looks less like a hill and more like a stage set, its lines sharpened and its history briefly made visible.
This wall climbing its eastern flank marks the old parish ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/13/from-parish-wall-to-prime-minister/
#NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #17thcentury #history #NationalTrust
Access Without Respect
A pack of a dozen mountain bikers bursts down the newly rebuilt, stone-stepped path on Roseberry Topping. Several are motor-assisted. Gravity does the rest. Gravel skitters, walkers flinch, gates are left yawning behind them. For a few loud seconds the hill is theirs, claimed by speed and noise. It looks impressive, in the way a juggern ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/08/access-without-respect/
#NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #AccessRights #NationalTrust
Letting Sheep Be Sheep
I cannot quite tell whether these sheep huddling under the gorse to dodge the sleet are tough old “moor” sheep or soft “lowland” types, but either way they carry the usual reputation. Sheep, like cows, belch methane, methane warms the planet, and that is that. Or so we thought. A study with the esoteric name “Forage for CH4nge”, carried out in ...
#TrailsOfTheUnexpected checks out #RoseberryTopping aka #OdinsHill just a cycle ride from my place in #NorthYorkshire
#GifsArtidote: i love watching these kind of channels. gives me lots of ideas of places i want to explore myself, hopefully soon.
#TrailsOfTheUnexpected checks out #RoseberryTopping aka #OdinsHill just a cycle ride from my place in #NorthYorkshire
#GifsArtidote: i love watching these kind of channels. gives me lots of ideas of places i want to explore myself, hopefully soon.
Initials in Stone, Mist in Motion
I stood on the summit of Roseberry Topping this morning, watching the mist drift over the fields below like a slow tide. The place felt as old as the hills, quiet enough to hear your own thoughts. Looking down at graffiti cut into the rock centuries ago only sharpened that feeling.
I am guessing, of course, that these carvings ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/16/initials-in-stone-mist-in-motion/
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 it feels like just a box-ticking exercise.
Long before Christmas muscled its way i ...
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 even I know this much. A bird that is not fleeing nor perched, but h ...
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, with a nod to “sg ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/18/a-long-view-from-cockle-scar/
#CockleScar #NewtonunderRoseberry #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #etymology #geology #NationalTrust
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 would soon vanish.
...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/17/roseberry-watching-over-enclosed-land/
#Aireyholme #AytonBank #GreatAyton #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #17thcentury #history
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 by passing aritists who imagine post ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/05/before-satellites-spoilt-the-fun-the-rise-of-triangulation/
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 February, and shuffled December to twelfth place. One is tem ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/01/december-arrives-and-haws-for-the-birds/
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 Odin’s Hill, it seems ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/23/little-roseberry-and-an-echo-of-old-norse/
#LittleRoseberry #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #RystonBank #history #medieval
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 quiet wonder, and there was a small ...
Shale, Sandstone and a Coffee Cup
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 expos ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/03/shale-sandstone-and-a-coffee-cup/
#NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #history #litter #NationalTrust
RIP SKIPPY: A Memorial Nobody Wants
Just below the summit of Roseberry Topping—a name that sounds like a pudding but is in fact Teesside’s iconic hill—there’s a large crag sandstone, rock that was laid down millions of years ago. The hill itself has only existed for twenty thousand or so, which makes it practically new money in geological terms. Moss and lichen ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/05/rip-skippy-a-memorial-nobody-wants/
The Summerhouse Below Roseberry
A small plaque fastened to the wall of this sandstone shell of a building offers a neat explanation. It claims this was once a shooting box, commissioned by Commodore William Wilson of Ayton Hall. A tidy story, except for one small problem. It does not add up.
A sketch by George Cruit in 1788 proves the building was already here. But o ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/02/the-summerhouse-below-roseberry/
Down among the Thistles
The hedgerows are heavy with the spoils of summer. Blackberries shine darkly in the shade, crab apples blush among the leaves, and Rowan berries hang in bright clusters. Rosebay Willowherb releases its silky seeds to the wind, while the thistles too surrender their down, sending it drifting like smoke across the fields.
Thistles are cursed a ...
The Windmills Are Winning
Ah yes, a truly legendary clash of minds and metal, as the supremely rational, astoundingly gifted Don Quixote—sharp as ever—heroically attacks a gang of… consults notes… windmills. Indeed. Definitely windmills. Not, say, wind turbines, or anything remotely threatening like giant knights in armour.
From atop Roseberry Topping, the view is tragic. The frontline of ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/28/the-windmills-are-winning/
Swifts on Roseberry, Silence on Easby Moor
It has been a while since I last stood on Roseberry, looking down on clouds. And even longer since I came up here on a Saturday. Most seemed to have taken the yellow thunderstorm warning as a cue to stay indoors. Easby Moor, with its pointed monument to Captain Cook, rose clean above the mist.
...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/19/swifts-on-roseberry-silence-on-easby-moor/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping