‘The
plates are very hot, but the food is cold,’ the landlord told the table next to
us at breakfast. Winking at us he added,
‘If a joke’s good one day, it’s good the next.’
The
landlady had joined us earlier as we stood on the patio looking at the chickens
and black pigs. She told us her
favourite hen was a black one and that she loved to pick it up and turn it all
around to let the light catch the iridescence in the feathers. ‘I don’t know what she thinks of it, probably
thinking, “Let go of me!”’
With
a couple more cheesy jokes from the landlord we were on our way, stopping first
at the Post Office for another packed lunch.
While the main lady was in the back making the sandwiches (halfway
through she called out, ‘What did you want again?’) an old bloke came in picked
out his papers and dropped off the right money with a cheery call through to
the back to let her know it had been done.
Jill
gave me a lift back to Bingley to start the final day’s walking. For once the day started in beautiful
sunshine and warmth. The first part of
the walk took me along the canal, past the impressive Five Rise locks, and I
could relax without worries of navigation or bog. There were a few people around and the town
pressed up against the canal on either side, but it still felt very peaceful. Groups of ducks paddled around, some with
ducklings; swans mingled amongst them. Crowds
of tadpoles wriggled about through the vegetation at the waterside. A dragonfly hunted through twinkling clouds
of midges. On the far side of the canal
a heron slowly stalked something in the water, its speared beak ready to be
flung forwards.
After
some miles I had to turn off the canal and head uphill towards Rombalds
Moor. Before meeting Jill at the next
stone, Dew, I was going to try to bag another off-piste trig. The map showed a plantation of trees
stretching over the slopes of Rivock Edge but reality showed that they had all
been felled. This isn’t always a good
thing for making your way across country, as the felled logs and branches can
form impassable obstacles, but it certainly made seeing your goal a good deal
easier. I followed the right of way for
a while, turning aside at the gate telling me the road I had hoped would make a
shortcut was not for the general public, then cut up steeply by a stone
wall. The top levelled out into a grassy
plateau, gently caressed by the now less manic breeze. The splendid view was of the Aire valley and
the towns spread along it.
Having
taken my trig photo, I retraced my steps and was soon with Jill by the Dew
stone. She remarked how it had been
designed to be seen after emerging from the trees and wondered what the people
thought of the situation now. The stone
is upright, inserted in a gap in a dry-stone wall, with a split in the centre
of the stone itself. Through and over
the gap was a lovely bucolic view of fields and hills.
We
parted company again and I had an easy and enjoyable walk through the still
remaining part of the wood. Being a conifer
plantation it was a bit dark and lacked variety of vegetation, but I quite like
the silence of these woods. When I left
them, I turned uphill again, past the Doubler Stones (a pair of anvil-shaped
stones) and on to more heathery moorland.
The top of the climb finished at the sudden escarpment of Addingham High
Moor with the Wharfe valley down below.
The route turned here and climbed some more up to the high part of the
woods on Rombalds Moor (another trig point!).
A bird of prey flew out from the trees and perched on a rock ahead of
me. As I quickly tried to take a picture
it flew off a bit further and sat on some heather, eying me suspiciously. This time I got a better shot and decided it
was a sparrowhawk. Having sat for its
picture, it took off over the moors.
The
walk had been fairly easy going up to this point and I had marched on at a good
pace. But as another short climb began,
I started to feel the week’s walking in my legs. I started singing to myself a variant of the
old Stones tune, ‘This could be the last climb, this could be the last climb,
maybe the last climb, I don’t know.’
Thankfully at the top it was a level walk past the radio mast, past the
Thimble Stones and to that convenient marker of the presence of a Stanza Stone:
Jill. The path over the boggy moor is
paved with flagstones and the poem, Puddle, is carved into a pair of these on
the ground. I imagine the space where
they’re located does indeed fill with water in rougher weather.
We
now had a race on. Jill had to walk back
to her car, drive round the moor then walk out the last stone in about the time
I did. My task was easier as I just had
to cross the moor. The flagstones took
me quickly to a bonus feature (via a trig point), the Twelve Apostles stone
circle. I was sceptical about what this
might amount to – some things marked as stone circles don’t look much more than
a couple of rocks near each other – but this was a proper little circle, rather
like the Nine Ladies on Stanton Moor in the Peak District. I then had another attack of scepticism as I
wondered how ‘reconstructed’ the site might be.
I
soon found the start of Backstone Beck, which would lead me down to the final
Beck stone (they must have worked hard on these names). First stop was at the Poetry Seat and the
Poetry Postbox. You’re supposed to put a
poem in the top, turn a handle and get another poem out at the bottom. My muse having sat this one out, I didn’t
have a poem to post, and didn’t take a chance on getting one out. The idea of it is probably better than the
reality.
The
leaflet guiding the way was accurate in getting me down near to the Cow and
Calf rocks but I decided against its suggested diversion to a quarry with
‘excellent examples of cup and ring marks’.
Hmm. Instead I dropped steeply
down by the beck and followed the rather particular instructions to look for a
big rock by some gorse bushes. I spotted
a likely candidate and a squeeze through the overgrown vegetation revealed the
Beck stone, sat in the middle of the gorge, looking both entirely in and of its
place, and also odd and unnatural. The
constant presence of water made some of the text hard to decipher, but it
looked very picturesque. As the sky
threatened to rain, I had a 10 minute wait for Jill to arrive. We admired the stone, congratulated ourselves
on getting that far, then turned back up the narrow path back to the car park.
With
that, there was just a celebratory pint of Yorkshire Terrier in the Cow and
Calf Hotel, a visit to Jill’s niece-in-law (is that a real term?), Barbara, who
kindly made us a tasty tea and whose delightful girls entertained me with their
nonsense, and then it was on the train home.
It had been a thoroughly enjoyable few days and a tough walk, but one
that was interesting and rewarding too.
For more about the Stanza Stones Trail see Ilkley Literature Festival
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