Westerdale

At New House Farm Westerdale, I found this interesting wall.
Single width stone but with some incredibly long copes neatly levelled off.  My spade (for scale)  has a long handle making the wall here near six foot tall.

There were numerous walls on the farm with copes of differing length, but non as extreme as this.

The only other similar wall I've seen in the North York Moors is this one at Commondale

First Hedge laying of 2013

1st of September - start of Countryside Stewardship rules for hedge laying, saw me eagerly cutting & laying my first hedge of the season at Low Askew near Cropton.  "Lovely", I thought as I'm often doing this in the freezing wet of darkest winter.  But it was too warm at around 18c and in just a T-shirt I was getting rather too many thorns in my arms for my liking.  The owner didn't want me to remove the fencing, which made me a little apprehensive as I didn't think I'd have enough  room  to work.  But it turned out I had plenty of room and as I only had two small corridors either side of the mixed species hedge to work in I didn't keep loosing my tools as often happens.  An added pleasure were the several buzzards flying around.

 Same location, different hedge.

A length of hedge following laying.

The same hedge one year later on.

Early summer growth one year on.

Regrowth from a newly laid hedge (Low Askew)








(Below).  This is how narrow a Yorkshire style hedge should be laid.

Yorkishire style!  Narrow!!