The Bee Field
How one place on the North York Moors can hold so many special memories.
View over the ‘bee field’ towards Black Hambleton
This field and the surrounding moorland on the North York Moors, on the road out the south end of Osmotherley over to Snilesworth Moor has been a meeting point for my family for over 50 years.
The North York Moors beckoned my father, Robert since he moved to Kirklevington as a child, and now at 82 years he still finds sanctuary in the open spaces of moorland, the views, the beauty, the history of the land, with wind on his face.
Today he will still drive this familiar path with his wife, my mum Beryl, when they both feel the pull of the moors and the real need to just ‘get out of the house’ and feel that calmness and sense of place.
To forget health worries and old age, and just soak up the views and sit and watch the moors, hear the bleat of sheep and just breathe.
As children, we would look forward to the call from our father after a busy working week, extra weekend jobs to make ends meet, house and garden maintenance and stresses of family life with four children for him to say often late on a Sunday afternoon, ‘who fancies a ride up the moors?’ We would pile into the car with the dog, excited as us, knowing we would be running free through the bracken playing hide and seek, laying on the springy heather, splashing in streams, exploring ruins, or just playing out, walking enjoying the open moors. Dad would encourage us to empty our lungs completely and take in the fresh air! We would collect sheep wool, sticks, stones, leaves and anything and fill our pockets with nature’s treasures.
Years later our childhood dog Ben, a sheepdog, was buried in his favourite playground, here beside the stream and we remember him searching for us amongst the bracken and his absolute love and excitedness when he found us.
Dad became a beekeeper and for over 40 years this field ,over the wall, became ‘the bee field’. Every summer we would load up the beehives, safely secured and take them late in the evening to their summer residence, ‘the bee field’, with the promise of sweet heather honey. We would keep our distance, peeking over the stone walls, out of the flight path of the bees. The heather on Black Hambleton moor gave up its nectar and by September the honeycombs and bees would be ready for their journey back home.
Pastel drawing of Rob (my father) in bee hat
Dad, a former steward at ‘The Great Yorkshire Show’ and member of the Yorkshire beekeepers’ association, still takes his bees here, now with fewer bees, has noticed the decline in bees and heather on the moors.
As adults with families of our own, spread across the county, we would meet up at ‘the bee field’ to picnic and play games on the flat patch just up the slope from here and re enact the simple childhood pleasures we all engaged in.
Today, the call of the North York Moors still entices us to ‘have a ride up the moors’ to this place, to walk, to sit, to pause and breathe deeply.
With the very sad news of my Mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, she and us all, will find precious time to just sit, and take in this beautiful landscape, to reflect and find peace.
