Well, it’s up! The message is revealed as ‘North York Moors’ and can be seen on the hillside at Greenbank off the Knott Road, although a better view can seen from Daleside Road (on the way to School Row and Hill Cottages). Or better still with a private helicopter!

Keep It Clean – just what Les Barker has been doing for us here in Rosedale for years and today, Friday 6 February, was his last day on duty before retirement.

We wish Les all the very best for his retirement and send him our grateful thanks.

He says he will be back for the show this year so there will be a chance to buy him a pint or two then!

In the Yorkshire Post there is a lovely piece about the Walkers are Welcome Scheme .

We are proud to be part of this. Thank you to the numerous folks from our Rosedale community  who freely give their time to make it happen every year.

“Gary Verity, chief executive of the region’s tourism body Welcome to Yorkshire, hailed another reason to be proud of the county.

“Yorkshire is famous for its warm welcome and generous hospitality, and for yet another Yorkshire town to receive Walkers Are Welcome status goes to show that the county’s famous hello remains very much part of its charm.

“And now with 25 towns and villages across the county recognised by the Walkers Are Welcome scheme, Yorkshire is reigning supreme as one of the nation’s top destinations for ramblers, amblers and hikers.”

Rosedale is fully Walkers are Welcome accredited.

The Rosedale Walking Festival is in 13th & 14th June. Two days of walks led by volunteers from our community and who love the place!

Walks to be announced soon, though there is a sign on the village green advertising this wonderful community led event, and the festival is over two days, you can walk anytime you like on the numerous beautiful paths that cover our dale, anytime of the year.

If you want local knowledge, a local guide, enjoy Rosedale from a new perspective come along to one of the guided walks this June.

A BBC Countryfile team was in Rosedale yesterday interviewing an expert on the lack of proper broadband provision in rural areas.

The programme with the Rosedale piece is due to go out on BBC1 on 14 September – watch this space!

The 2014 Walking Festival in Rosedale was blessed with reasonable weather this year so that around 40 hikers took part in the wide variety of walks over Saturday and Sunday 14 to 15 June.

More plants have mysteriously appeared in one of the empty tubs around the village.

There are a couple of empty tubs still on the green, so feel free to dig in and get planting – some herbs, perhaps?

Thanks to the covert cultivator!

A beautiful new bench for the use of weary hikers was placed over the weekend at the Lookout area at the foot of Chimney Bank in memory of Brian Jeminson, from a longstanding Rosedale family.

The bench was donated by his son, Mark Jeminson, and daughter Bridget Read. Brian Jeminson was also the brother of Carol Cockerill of Depot Cottage, Rosedale East.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded a £3m grant to protect and raise awareness of one of the unique landscapes of the North York Moors National Park.

The main focus of the project will be the importance of the pioneering ironstone and railway heritage of Grosmont and Rosedale which is being eroded by time.

The project – named ‘This Exploited Land, the trailblazing story of ironstone and railways in the North York Moors’ – will also encourage rare wildlife, wild daffodils, ancient woodlands and the special species of the River Esk.

Linda Chambers, a member of the executive group for the ‘This Exploited Land’ project and secretary of the Rosedale History Society, said: “This is wonderful news for all those who live in Rosedale and the Esk Valley, linked as we are by our industrial heritage.  We hope that our communities will continue to support the project over the coming years – this is a great opportunity not only to help maintain our nationally important sites but also to tell our story to the wider world.”

National Park Authority Fundraising Officer Stephen Croft said: “Key parts of this story have never been told before. We want to capture the public imagination with the story of the forgotten communities, the pioneering ironstone exploitation and the early development of railways along the remote valleys of the North York Moors.”

The ironworks at Grosmont retain rare surviving elements of world-leading innovation in blast-furnace technology forged in the region on Teesside. This contributed to innovative bridge design across the world and eventually to the creation of Sydney’s famous Harbour Bridge.

At the height of its production between 1873 and 1914, about 19 per cent of the world’s demand for iron came from the Cleveland Hills and the North York Moors.

The project will reveal the impact the sudden explosion of industrialisation had on the landscape, its national and international significance and conserve, protect and record the fragile remains of this revolutionary age.

Stephen Croft continued: “We want the landscape to become recognised for its economic and technical influence which extended worldwide. This will satisfy a hunger for recognition in local communities and support the tourism economy. Special links will be made with Teesside which itself has suffered industrial decline.”

The story includes the achievements of railway pioneer George Stephenson who designed the Whitby to Pickering Railway in the early 1830s.  Much of it is still being used today by the North York Moors Railway Trust.

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) announced grants totalling £21m to conserve nine distinctive landscapes in the UK. The investment will ensure a boost for rural areas and provide long-term social, economic and environmental benefits.

HLF’s Landscape Partnership (LP) programme – which has now been running for a decade – is the most significant grant scheme available for landscape-scale projects.  To date, over £160m has been invested in 91 different areas across the UK helping forge new partnerships between public and community bodies and ensuring people are better equipped to understand and tackle the needs of their local landscapes.

The Authority and its community partners were one of three successful Yorkshire bids for funding. The HLF also awarded grants to the rare, internationally-important wetland at Humberhead Levels in North Lincolnshire and East and South Yorkshire (£1.9m), and to the Ingleborough Dales (£2.1m) for a limestone landscape in the Craven district of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Professor Sir John Lawton CBE FRS, eminent British ecologist and author of Making Space for Nature: A Review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network, added:

“As a passionate advocate of landscape-scale conservation through habitat recreation and restoration, I am delighted to see HLF’s continuing, visionary support for nine more Landscape Partnerships throughout the UK, for the benefits of people, landscapes and wildlife.  And as an adopted Yorkshireman, I cannot help noticing, with considerable pride, that three of them are in the iconic landscapes of God’s own county!”
Fiona Spiers, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for Yorkshire and the Humber, said:
“This funding has helped forge strong local partnerships which have secured the future of some of our most threatened landscapes. These schemes all demonstrate a need for urgent conservation work to the natural and built heritage as well as reconnecting rural communities to these places.  They are important on many levels, including being an integral part of our health and well-being and a significant contributor to the tourist economy. Yorkshire’s amazing countryside is under ever-increasing pressure and we must act now to make sure it continues to be one of our greatest assets.”