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.

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 grand design to upgrade several routes across their Roseberry property, plan to resurface this one with aggregate and add drainage channels, turning it into something more “accessible.” Noble intentions, no doubt, though beauty and convenience are uneasy companions.

An article in the latest Private Eye about the grand scheme to rebuild the old steelworks on the Tees set me thinking of Eston Nab, where I used to run at lunchtimes while working at ICI Wilton. The steelworks was also one of my sites back then, so its rise, fall and resurrection have always held a certain grim fascination for me, though the machinations behind it all make my head spinBrooks, Richard.

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 rather more curious: that single dressed stone in the flagged footpath — bottom left of the photo.

Once upon a time, Sleights must have seemed the very picture of rural contentment: a quiet, respectable village where weary visitors might escape the clamour of industrial England amid green hills and fresh air. It was, one suspects, precisely the sort of place where Whitby’s prosperous merchants might choose to end their days, away from the bustle of the harbour and the smell of fish.

Larpool Viaduct at Whitby stands today like a brick-red monument to an age when Victorian railway engineers thought artistically, even as they fought mud, tides, and buried forests. Completed in 1884 to carry the Scarborough and Whitby line across the deep valley of the River Esk, it was built entirely of brick, a deliberate rejection of iron whose corrosion was feared in the salty coastal air.

A splendid day upon the Cleveland Hills, warm, sunny and kissed by a breeze so genteel it could almost be mistaken for civility. Cringle Moor was heaving, of course, the Viking Chase Fell Race transforming it into something between a checkpoint and a human anthill. And there, above the sweating masses, hovered the latest curse of modern leisure: the drone. That infernal, buzzing contraption—the plaything of those who believe a GoPro makes them Fellini.

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 seems to rise from deep within the valley, somewhere near Ingleby Greenhow—if my eye has not deceived itself.

A lonely crossing on the Lyke Wake Walk. Halfway between exhaustion and achievement. This was once the place where weary walkers would find their support party, waiting with flasks of tea and stodgy puddings to fortify them for the bleak march across Wheeldale Moor. That was half a century ago. The ruin that once stood here, Hamer House, has long since crumbled to a mere mound, a short stretch of rubble wall the only clue that anything human ever defied the wind here.

No one can say for certain whether young Wilfred Littleboy ever scrambled down the steep bank to cross the new bridge over Skelton Beck and wander into Old Saltburn, with its whitewashed cottages huddled beneath Cat Nab and the gaiety of its fairground by the sea. It is difficult to picture a spirited boy resisting the lure of that curious conical hill, yet perhaps his father’s position confined him to the more respectable west cliff, where the genteel rode the tramway down to the pier rather than risk the steep descent.

Hidden behind the trees to the left in the photo stands St Cuthbert’s Church, its quiet stones guarding secrets far older than the building itself. During construction in the 19th century, workmen uncovered a remarkable find: several Viking graves, complete with swords and traders’ weighing scales. The discovery hinted that Kildale was once far more than a remote dale—it was a settlement of standing, perhaps astride an ancient trade route.

Marske can justly claim to be among the oldest settlements on the Cleveland coast. The lonely tower of St Germain, with its small cemetery, stands upon ground that has been holy for some fourteen centuries, the first church being raised there in the Saxon age. For many generations, worshippers from Redcar and Coatham made their way along the sands and dunes to attend services, for St Germain’s was then the only church in the district.

Roseberry Common is, as its name implies, Common land. Once belonging to the Lord of the Manor of Newton, it was vital to village life. Here the people gathered fuel, grazed their livestock, and scraped together the means to keep both body and hearth alive through harsh seasons. If you look closely, you may spot a flock of sheep grazing on the grass to the right of centre.

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 crawl over the rock, nature’s version of interior design, unfolding at a pace that makes paint drying look impulsive.

Another glimpse from Thursday’s wander through Swaledale: this is How Hush, a scar across the hills carved not by nature but by centuries of lead mining. Lead was likely valued here long before history began to take notes. The vast Grinton–Fremington dykes, which probably marked prehistoric tribal boundaries, bear silent witness to early human presence in the valley, though there is no evidence that the folk were aware of the riches beneath their feet.

Grinton Smelting Mill is one of the best-preserved lead mills in the Yorkshire Dales. It sits in Cogden Gill, just south of Grinton village, at the confluence of two becks. The site offered water, level ground, and easy access to ore. One of the becks had to be diverted, culverted and partly covered to make space for the building. In the Dales, lead smelting mills once stood in their dozens.

Most of you know I am no admirer of memorials. Benches, plaques and carved rocks scatter the moors like litter. Yet this one is somewhat different, as if justified by age. Hidden off the main paths above Greenhow Botton since 1972, I had no idea it existed until I came across it, a few years ago now. At first sight I thought it a just shooting butt, but the circular dry stone wall carried a metal plaque: “

This bridge in Baysdale is more than a quaint curiosity. Its single arch spans Black Beck with quiet dignity, yet the quirky little parapets give it certain character. These are later additions, added in the seventeenth or eighteenth century by someone with a flair for decoration but little sense of symmetry. The bridge was originally built to serve a Cistercian priory, which has long since disappeared, its stones reused in the farm now in its place.

From the summit of Roseberry Topping, the Cleveland landscape performs its finest impression of timeless rural charm: undulating green fields stitched together by hedgerows, with Aireyholme Farm sitting unobtrusively in the middle like it’s been dropped there by a distracted cartographer. This was the patch of the country where the young James Cook grew up, his father working respectably as farm manager while the son no doubt stared out at this very view and dreamt of horizons a little less… parochial.