February Fair-Maids
The signs are there for all to see. The frogs in the garden pond have woken, shaking off winter like old men rising from stiff chairs. Hazel catkins hang thick and yellow in the brief scraps of sunlight. A few brave daffodil buds test the air. The sun provides apricity, its setting creeps past five o’clock, and hope, stubborn as ever, returns by inche ...
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 map. My first thought was that the incident must point towards a tunnel beneath Aireyhol ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/24/echoes-from-the-old-workings-beneath-cliff-rigg/
#CliffRidgeWood #GreatAyton #19thcentury #history #whinstone
Nettle Wood in Autumn’s Glow
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 pounds. A bargain, one might say, for a place that now looks splendid in autumn, its beech saplings blazing away where once nettles ruled.
Farmers, of course, had little patienc ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/05/nettle-wood-in-autumns-glow/
Cliff Rigg Wood: An Old Tramway, a Broken Gate and Echoes of Cook
I thought it worth recording this path while it remains as it is—the bottom one through Cliff Rigg Wood. For posterity, as they say. It is due for “improvement” in the next few weeks, though I am not quite sure what the result will look like.
The National Trust, in their ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/18/cliff-rigg-wood-an-old-tramway-a-broken-gate-and-echoes-of-cook/
Orange Spots — The Slow Death of Ash Dieback
Ash dieback is sweeping through Cliff Ridge Wood, and the National Trust Rangers have been out marking doomed ash trees with orange spots. These are the infected—struck by a disease caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. It came from Asia, hitched a ride on the global plant trade, and now spreads on th ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/05/orange-spots-the-slow-death-of-ash-dieback/
Bombweed, a Hall Built of Basalt and German POWs
The vivid pinks of Rosebay Willowherb blaze across summer landscapes, yet most pass them by. Known as Fireweed, it is often the first plant to reclaim burnt ground.
That was not always the case. The Georgians treated it as a rarity, grown in gardens rather than spotted in the wild. Even ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/03/bombweed-a-hall-built-of-basalt-and-german-pows/
Mother Shimble’s Snick-needles
The famous Bluebells of Newton and Cliff Rigg Woods are having a lie-in. Give them a week, perhaps, before they are at their best. Meanwhile, the true prima donna of the woodland floor is the Greater Stitchwort, cluttering the place with its endless sprinkling of white, star-shaped flowers that seem to think themselves terribly ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/24/mother-shimbles-snick-needles/
The Cuckoo’s Shoe
Yesterday I posted about the Cuckoo. Today, naturally, it is the Cuckoo’s Shoe — not, alas, footwear for birds, but yet another whimsical provincial name, this time for the Dog Violet. A harmless enough little flower, though my encounter this morning has sent me spiralling into yet more botanical trivia.
The woodland floor is having its usual spring flirtation with t ...
A Brief and Unnecessary Guide to Burrs
When I was a lad, I remember a Saturday morning BBC Radio programme called Children’s Favourites. One of the songs frequently played was I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, sung by an American named Burl Ives. I thought Burl was an cool name.
At the time, I had no idea that ‘burl’ is the American term for those un ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/02/23/a-brief-and-unnecessary-guide-to-burrs/
Cliff Rigg Scallywags Hideout
A year ago, I wrote about the Great Ayton Scallywags Patrol, a secretive Auxiliary Unit stationed in the area during the Second World War. Unlike the familiar, shambolic image of “Dad’s Army,” these men were part of a covert Home Guard unit. If the Germans had invaded, they could expect to last about a week—hardly an encouragin ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/02/22/cliff-rigg-scallywags-hideout/
Mick Garratt
