Earth mysteries and fairies on the north york moors

Giants, mushrooms, and mordor. 

Wandering through the hills and forest of northern England, finding Blakey Topping isn't difficult, as it rises from the surrounding landscape like it's been dropped there, which according to legend it has, or rather thrown there.
The story goes like this.......
The great giant Wade was in dispute with another giant and scooped out a handful of earth to throw at his enemy. this great scooping of earth created the nearby gorge known as the Hole of Horcum. Anyway his throw missed and the hill known as Blakey Topping is where it landed.
There is a prehistoric trackway leading from the Hole of Horcum to Blakey Topping known as the Old Wives Way, so maybe thats a clue to what the dispute was about, or maybe he was actually throwing it at his old wife. there is also an ancient holy well / sacred spring not far away called the Old Wives Well, and another ancient trackway called Wades Causeway, so clearly Wade and his wife are inseperable from the local landscape.

  Wades Causeway is a long stretch of ancient trackway between Malton and Whitby (about 25 miles) which, like so much else, is usually credited as a 'roman' road. this is due to the sad fact that most antiquarian scholars, and indeed most modern archaeologists, could not and cannot get past the idea that nobody could possibly have built such roads BEFORE the romans invaded our land, as it was full of ignorant barbarians. That the existance of ancient temples like those at Avebury and Stonehenge and elsewhere and feats of engineering such as Silbury Hill make a lie of this idea seems to pass most of them by. Anyway, the legend says that Wade built the trackway for his wife to cross the moors to milk her cows.
Wade is reckoned to represent Woden / Odin. Also possibly Wayland the smith from Germanic and Norse mythology. Wades wife is perhaps the ancient Great Goddess.
  The whole landscape around Blakey Topping is a place which emanates an atmosphere of magic and to camp here on a late summer night and watch the stars appear and the moon rise is a wonderful experience. There are the forest covered hills to the south and east and the heather moors rising to the north and west. it's only about 10 miles across the forest to the east before the cliffs fall away into the north sea.
Just below Blakey Topping the moss and lichen covered remains of the neolithic stone circle add to the magic.

  A note for mycologists and space travellers, the fields around the stone circle produce the biggest crop of psilocybin semilanceata i've ever seen.

On a less positive note, just about a mile and a half to the north, there is the Fylingdales early warning station. Looking like nothing so much as the dark tower of Mordor, it ruins the view for  miles around. An intrusion from cold war days which should be dismantled as soon as possible.