At the last gate off the moor at the end of the day I managed to drop my camera, thankfully in its case, into one of the many icy puddles. Fingers crossed I will still have some pictures of the day. (to add to the anxiety, my WordPress account has gone down and I’m trying to restore it, and now I’ve disappeared down one of those internet holes to watch England ladies playing soccer against Scotland)

I’ll be back tomorrow.

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But what a day, we tracked down another two of those Stanza Stones.  You may remember these six poems on the theme of water written by Simon Armitage, our poet laureate, carved into stone by Pip Hall and sited with the help of local landscape architect Tom Lonsdale on the Pennines between Marsden and Ilkley. Three of us had already visited Snow, Rain, and Mist.  We were now in search of Dew and Puddle.

Today I had promised my two fellow protagonists good weather coming later in the morning for a trip to Ilkley Moor. The day started badly, wet and misty. JD phoned in sick but encouraged our plan without him. ( I now have a pressing but pleasant task of making sure he completes the cycle in the better Spring weather) By the time we, the remaining two, Clare the ‘slate poem lady’ of Longridge Fell fame and myself, of no fame whatsoever, had driven to Silsden the sky was blue. Just as I had promised – phew.

I should now say there were actually three of us as canine Zola had come along for the ride and was keen to get out and explore the moors.  I missed her portrait the other day on Longridge Fell so here she is today. We maybe walked four miles today she probably ran twenty chasing grouse and generally having a good time.- all bare foot of course.

A suitable layby was found on the  lane out of Silsden high above the Aire Valley. Ginger parkin, a traditional Yorkshire recipe, and coffee set us on our way. Zola couldn’t wait. Some nondescript fields led into a plantation and then all of a sudden there unmistakably was the Dew Stone or more accurately the two Dew Stones. Pip had chosen a block of gritstone in a Brighouse quarry, they sawed it in half and polished it to produce two facing fine grained pages. Pip then worked on them in her studio before they were carried, I’m sure with a lot of love and trepidation, to be placed in a natural gap in one of those stone walls separating the fields from the fells. This is what we saw in all its awesome presence. Was it the light, the position, the moors or the frosty air that made it so dramatic?  Perhaps you had to be there to feel it.

The minutiae brings out the fissures in the rock, the exquisite carving and the lichens. Interestingly, compared with photos in the guide, the stones have aged a lot in the13years since their completion. It would be good to come back in another decade

Here’s the poem in full in case you can’t read it in the photo.

DEW.

The tense stand-off
of summer’s end,
the touchy fuse-wire
of parched grass,
tapers of bulrush and reed,
any tree
a primed mortar of tinder,
one spark enough to trigger
a march on the moor
by ranks of flame.

Dew enters the field
under cover of night,
tending the weary and sapped,
lifting its thimble of drink
to the lips of a leaf,
to the stoats tongue,
trimming a length
of barbed-wire fence
with liquid gems, here
where bog-cotton
flags its surrender
or carries its torch
for the rain.

Then dawn, when sunrise
plants its fire-star
in each drop, ignites
each trembling eye. 
Simon Armitage 2010

             My favourite line is –

We tore ourselves away and wandered back. Trail runners came through on the bridleway and I gazed longingly up at the trig point on Rivock Edge, there looks to be some good bouldering up there.

It wasn’t far in the car to the old Ilkley Road  heading straight up the moor above the metropolis of Keighley. We were delayed by some fuzzy Red Kite watching and some wayside stones. 

The rough car park at the top was popular with dogwalkers. A couple of workmen were heading for the transmitter tower, they hadn’t been able to reach here the last few days because of ice and snow, We were lucky.

Once on the correct track, a highway of reclaimed mill floor flagstones, we were soon at the next Stanza Stone, Puddle, although I could have easily have walked  past it, I wonder how many do.  Again there were two and aptly they were lying in a puddle, today rimmed with ice. This whole fell is an enormous sponge. The poem is carved onto the two blocks which are again from a mill floor, bits of iron wear can be seen where machinery once stood.

      PUDDLE

Rain-junk                                                                          
Sky-litter                                                                       
Some May mornings                                                    
Atlantic storm-horses                                                   
clatter this way,                                                             
shedding their iron shoes                                          
in potholes and ruts,                                                   
shoes that melt                                                              
into steel grey puddles                                                 
then settle and set                                                        
into cloudless mirrors                                                 
by noon. 

The shy deer
of the daytime moon
comes to sip from the rim
But the sun
likes the look of itself,
stares all afternoon,
Its hard eye
Lifting the sheen
from the glass,
turning the glaze
to rust.
Then we don’t see things for dust.

Simon Armitage 2010

                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                       

Simon’s verse is very accessible, he knows these moors and weather. ‘Steel grey puddles’ was very apt today.

There was still plenty of daylight so we marched on across the flags to an undistinguished trig point, 402 m for the record. Across Wharfdale the satellite dishes and domes of Menwith Hill could be clearly seen, do you remember the permeant  women’s peace camps of the 80s, I used to regularly drive past them using Blubberhouses Moor to get between Longridge and Darlington, my parents home.

The flagged path came to an abrupt end. And there a few metres away was our next objective, the Twelve Apostles stone circle. I’ve had to kook up their history so here.it is.

Rombalds Moor is scattered with rocks, manipulated one way or another by man, for thousands of years. The experts cannot always agree on the origins or purpose of many of them – what will they make of the Stanza Stones in five hundred years. We wisely returned the way we had come on the flags, diversions to visit other stones marked on the map would have involved some serious bog hopping. The men were still working on the tower as we arrived back at the carpark. Zola needed a good toweling and was then soon asleep in the car dreaming of grouse.

Our one remaining Stanza Stone lies in a beck somewhere down the other side of Ilkley Moor, lets hope we can pick as good a day as today to find if.

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