It never used to be so busy at the Cow and Calf Rocks’ carpark  A bright Saturday has brought crowds up here above an equally busy Ilkley. We are here to find the last of Simon Armitage and Pipa Hall’s  Stanza Stone Poems, Beck, hidden in Backstone Beck where the latter comes down at speed towards the town. I have downloaded some ‘simple’ directions but am afraid I may get distracted by the nearby climbing crags.

Ilkley Quarry, the Cow and Calf and the Rocky Valley were favourite haunts of my early climbing days. There was plenty of traditional excitement to be had on the rounded gritstone. But no let’s find the poetry stone first.

‘Take the path out of the car park’ was an obvious start, we could manage that. The paths are more well used than I remember them, were they even here back then? But there are lots of them going off in all directions. And there are people in all directions too. Some coming up from Ilkley by way of the tarn, most like us wandering from the Cow and Calf and others from over the moor. Dogs, in all shapes and sizes, are everywhere, which gives Zola plenty of canine interactions, Clare is on hand to call her in when things are starting to get out of hand. I am amazed that she can bound off into the distance (Zola, not Clare), in a place she has never set foot in, and keep reappearing at our heels. The bracken is dead which helps us find the narrower paths. All the time we have a panoramic view of Ilkley down below in the Aire valley.

‘Head towards a plantation’ was the next  instruction, yes, but which one? A solitary Stanza Poem fingerpost then takes some of the adventure away. The sound of the beck meant we were close. ‘Scramble up alongside the beck’ was our instruction – but steps have been provided recently. ‘Squeeze through between a gorse bush and a boulder’  the guide says. But someone has cut the gorse bush back. Is this all down to the YouTube/Instagram/what three words phenomena creating honey pots in our wild countryside? I’m beginning to feel a little cheated, this was to be the climax of our poetry trail with the most difficult stone to find. Zola obviously finds it for us, but then in the end we have it completely to ourselves.

False trail 

Is this what you are looking for?

What a spot, a wild tumbling beck with the brown bracken clinging to the hillside. Water is splashing around the rocks and there in the centre of it all is the Stanza Stone. A proud boulder sitting in the flow as was Pipa Hall when she carved out the letters. We ask ourselves how did they find this elysian place? 

It is all one chase.
Trace it back the source
might be nothing more than a teardrop
squeezed from a Curlew’s eye,
then follow it down to the full-throated roar
at its mouth – a dipper strolls the river
dressed for dinner in a white bib.
The unbroken thread of the beck
with its nose for the sea
all flux and flex, soft-soaping a pebble
for thousands of years, or here
after hard rain, sawing the hillside in half
with its chain. Or here, where water unbinds
and hangs at the waterfall’s face, and
just for that one, stretched white moment
becomes lace.
©Simon Armitage 2010

A bit of precarious scrambling had us up close to the poem which is slowly taking on the patina of all the other water splashed rocks. What will it be like in another ten, twenty or fifty years? all a very short period of time for the stones up here on the moor. The references to the curlew and the dipper are perfect for the situation. If you have read any of Simon Armitage’s poems you will recognise his acute observation, engagement and ability to weave his words. If you haven’t, a good start would be an anthology of his writings – Paper Aeroplane, 1989 – 2014. The title poem at the very end is one of my favourites, a self-effacing offering worlds apart from Tennyson, Simon is no stuffy Poet Laureate.

Where next? Well I had suggested we explore the wild moor looking for those thousand years old markings in the rocks up here. Cup and ring marks and geometric carvings. I won’t bore you with our subsequent wanderings. Zola probably derived the most benefit from the open moorland obstacle course. Did we find any? I can’t say for certain, lets just leave it there. I don’t know who C Clark and Crackety Jack are.

Our only trophy was stumbling across a ‘poetry seat’ constructed in line with the poems. The sign said Marsden 451/4 miles, where we had started with Snow up in the quarries at Pule Hill in October. We have not walked the whole trail but picked off the stones on the way – Rain, Mist, Dew, Puddle and now Beck. Whichever way you approach it this gives a wonderful feeling for the Pennine scenery, the vagrancies of its weather and the talent and inspiration of the poetry team.

Going with the flow Clare posts a poem into the letter box. I wonder when it will next emerge.

On our way back to the car I indulge in some reminiscing of those carefree climbing days long ago.

There was no congratulatory drink in the nearby Cow and Calf Inn, a quick toilet stop and I was happy to be on my way home before all those high intensity car headlights had chance to confuse me. How the mighty have fallen.

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There is however a post script. Our journey is not yet done.

The final Stanza?  Armitage and Hall spoke about a seventh, hidden Stanza Stone. Although they disputed its size, both agreed it was fairly small and had been placed within either a “wooden casket” or “hollowed-out log”.  Armitage added: “We took it to a place above Hebden Bridge, where the Ted Hughes poem ‘Six Young Men’ is set, and placed it under the riverbank there.” Shortly afterwards the valley was flooded, “so we’ve no idea where it is now. It’s either in the Atlantic, or in the North Sea – or lying in someone’s cellar in Todmorden”.

Let me know if you come across it.

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