I have just got back from walking along part of the Cleveland Hills above Guisborough in North Yorkshire. It was a sunny but frosty morning after several days of rain. The air was very clear. The Cleveland Hills and Pennines were capped with snow. Beyond Teesmouth, on the northern horizon were two white shapes that I had not seen before. The leftmost was long and flat, the rightmost narrow and pointed. I am fairly sure these were the snow-capped Cheviot and Hedgehope Hill, 80 miles away and almost on the Scottish border. When I was at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the '80s my tutor said that he could see the Cheviot from his office in the Claremont Tower. See the image in this old article in the Guardian for what they look like: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/26/country-diary-cheviots-clear-view-1968. Today the snowline on them was at a lower level than in that image.

#teesside #northyorkmoors #cheviothills #walking #guisborough #sightlines

Biodiversity Net Gain: Green Promises, Thin Results

The UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain scheme was meant to be our environmental shield. A simple promise that development would leave habitats “in a measurably better state than they were before.” It is sold as a key tool to halt “catastrophic declines in nature.” Fine words, neatly printed.

The proposal to develop an 1 ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/10/biodiversity-net-gain-green-promises-thin-results/

#Guisborough #Pinchinthorpe

Tinghou: From Meeting Place to Housing Estate

Not the most flattering view for today, I will admit. A quiet field, currently earning its keep as horse pasture, pressed up against Lowcross Farm. I took the photograph for two reasons, neither of them aesthetic.

First, for the record. This field sits under a planning application for a new estate of 117 ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/24/tinghou-from-meeting-place-to-housing-estate/

#Guisborough #Pinchinthorpe #history #medieval

Viaducts, Violence and Victory: How Rival Railways Fought for Cleveland

The old viaduct at Slapewath stands forlorn and overgrown. It looks peaceful now. Built in 1861 by the Cleveland Railway, it sat at the centre of one of the fiercest railway battles in the north of England.

By the time the Middlesbrough & Guisbroug ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/22/viaducts-violence-and-victory-how-rival-railways-fought-for-cleveland/

#Guisborough #Slapwath #19thcentury #history #railway

The Station That Was Not for the Plebs: How Guisborough Got a Railway, Reluctantly

The photograph shows an overgrown piece of railway history: the remains of the private station, built not for a town, but for Sir Alfred Edward Pease of Hutton Hall. It is a neat place to begin, because it tells you almost everything about ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/21/the-station-that-was-not-for-the-plebs-how-guisborough-got-a-railway-reluctantly/

#Guisborough #19thcentury #history #railway

Life Support for a “Green and Pleasant Land”

A gloomy photograph  for a gloomy day in a gloomy month. The sky is doing that flat grey thing, the sort that drains the colour out of everything. As if on schedule, the news has joined in, with fresh misery arriving from across the Atlantic, where the headlines manage to sink the mood even further. With that as the backdrop, h ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/19/life-support-for-a-green-and-pleasant-land/

#Guisborough #Environment

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 brain for life, usually thanks to the Cubs and a damp field. ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/13/lost-without-moving-britains-wandering-north/

#Guisborough #NewtonMoor #NorthYorkMoors

The Watchers of the Plain: Highcliff Nab in the Stone Age Landscape

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 befor ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/27/the-watchers-of-the-plain-highcliff-nab-in-the-stone-age-landscape/

#Guisborough #HighcliffNab #NorthYorkMoors #history #mesolithic #prehistoric

Panis Porcinus: Bread for Pigs, Medicine for Men

The common names we give to plants often say less about science and more about superstition. Take fleabane. Its title comes from the old belief that dried stems would drive away fleas. Toothwort was thought to cure toothache, not through any chemical virtue, but because its flowers looked rather ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/05/panis-porcinus-bread-for-pigs-medicine-for-men/

#Guisborough #HuttonLowcross #flora #folklore #history