Peter Walker

THE coming weekend is one of the busiest in the year with a wide range of celebrations.

A PAIR of young elephants, a male and a female, have been found living wild in remote woodland in the Esk Valley of North Yorkshire.

THE North York Moors are known for many things ranging from the covering of purple heather in the autumn to the carpet of yellow in spring when the Farndale daffodils present themselves to the world.

AS I compile these notes two weeks ahead of publication, the feast day of St Valentine is now past, and as the birds of our countryside began to sing and select their mates, so did a fair proportion of humans.

I SPENT my childhood in a moorland village said by Arthur Mee to be “cut off from the world by the moors”.

A VISIT to the fascinating new Stanbrook Abbey in the hills above Wass, near Coxwold, made me realise that, living in the vicinity as I do, my home is surrounded by abbeys, priories, minsters and churches.

WHILE many of song birds are silent during the winter months, a few might be tempted on a sunny day to sing from a lofty place, if only for a brief moment. I have heard robins singing in January and sometimes that shy bird, the dunnock or even a wren might produce a pleasing short melody.

THIS coming Friday, January 6, is widely known as the Twelfth Day of Christmas, but in some areas it is known as Twelfth Night or even Old Christmas Day, the latter dating to a time preceding Pope Gregory’s calendar changes of 1582. In some areas, tomorrow evening (December 5) was known as Twelfth Night, while in other areas, it is the night of January 6 that is known by that name. So does Twelfth Night come before or after Twelfth Day?

THE coming weekend is perhaps the most celebrated of all events in our calendar.

IN the past, the fisher folk of our north-eastern coastline were highly superstitious but I am not sure whether this intensified at this time of year with Christmas on the horizon.