The Hole of Horcum

On a VERY windy Saturday in January, we decided to brave the weather and go out for a bit of a hike. We chose a place called The Hole of Horcum. It is a deep valley out on the Northeast Yorkshire Moors halfway between the little town of Pickering and the East coast town of Whitby for those who would like more specifics. It's quite a place, actually, and I'm afraid that these pictures do not do it justice. This above was taken on the rim overlooking the valley. The wind up there was enough to blow you all the way into the North Sea! But, once we got off of the rim and down into the valley we actually had a very pleasant day of it!
Here we are down in the valley. You can see the rim of the bowl in the background behind us. We descended quite a ways down from where the car is parked. This is the remains of a wall surrounding a little cottage. The cottage wasn't particularly attractive to me, so I didn't take a picture of it, but I liked the wall very much. Heidi, Christy, and Tasha are the people you can see. They are my usual traveling buddies.
Now you can see the wall at a distance with this lovely, picturesque tree. I really liked that tree for some reason. As you can see, the grass stays very green around here, even in the winter. There was lots of water in this valley because we have been experiencing a LOT of rain lately.
Here we are hiking up a very steep road. It looks like the ruts were made by wagon wheels at one time and may have been deepened by motorized vehicles since. By the time we got to the top of this path, we were removing our coats and hats due to the increase in body temperature. It was a lovely walk, however.
Here is another of my favorite views as we were hiking along. I like the stark contrast between the browns and the vibrant green. There was a nice little stream nearby as well. The rim of the bowl is easily seen in the background. We had been standing up there a short while before.

Christy told me that I looked like I was conquering a mountain in this picture. I'm bundled back up again because we are coming back out of the valley now and the wind has resumed its icy and violent blowing. Honestly! Cold wind is not a happy thing! I am standing on one of the quaint little steps that allow you to climb over the fencing that keeps the sheep in their pastures. There were a lot of sheep and a lot of pasture land out here. There are also lots of little hikes that go off from this valley and at some point we are going to come back and take at least one more trail to some new location.