Beacon Walk for the Queen's Jubilee

Amongst the various things that we have done over the last long Jubilee weekend a small party from three directions walked to Churn Milk Joan on the top of Midgley Moor to witness the beacons being lit on Scout Road and Stoodley Pike.  About 30 of us were all gathered.  There was little to see from such a distance but it was an atmospheric night improved by a nip of rum.  And yes, we did put a coin in the hollow.  Ted Hughes' poem is below:

"A lonely stone
Afloat in the stone heavings of emptiness
Keeps telling her tale. Foxes killed her.

You take the coins out of the hollow in the top of it.
Put your own in. Foxes killed her here.
Why just here? Why not five yards that way?
A squared column, planted by careful labour.

Sun cannot ease it, though the moors grow warm.

Foxes killed her, and her milk spilled.

Or they did not. And it did not. Maybe

Farmers brought their milk this far, and cottegers
From the top of Luddenden valley left cash
In the stones crown, probably in vinegar,
And the farmers left their change. Relic of The Plague.

Churn-milk jamb. And Joan did not come trudging
Through the long swoon of moorland
With her sodden feet, nipped face.
Neither snow nor foxes made her lie down
While they did whatever they wanted.

The negative of the skylines is blank.

Only a word wrenched. Then the pain came,
And her mouth opened.

And now all of us,
Even this stone, have to be memorials
Of her futile stumblings and screams
And awful death".

Churn-Milk Joan
By Ted Hughes

For the uninitiated, Churn Milk Joan is a boundary stone above Mytholmroyd in the Calder Valley, close to Crow Hill.