91Èȱ¬

The Stanza Stones Project is a collaboration, between Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage and the Ilkley Literature Festival, devised to get people into the landscape and inspired to write. Six poems were carved into the rock on a 47 mile trail that takes in the best scenery West Yorkshire has to offer. Ellie Harrison meets Simon at the Snow stone in Marsden, the trail starting point and finds out how water in its different forms has inspired his poetry. Ellie later goes underground to find out how Standedge Tunnel, played an essential role in the regions development during the Industrial Revolution.

Matt Baker heads to Stirley Community Farm on the edge of the Pennines. This 240 acre working farm is run by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. The Trust aims to get pastoral farming working with wildlife. It will take years, but the aim is to make Stirley Farm a glorious piece of wildlife-rich British countryside and an example to farming across the whole of pastoral Britain. Matt learns what the farm was like before the Trust took over four years ago and sees everything that’s been achieved in that time. Joining workers and volunteers Matt mucks in, from bedding down cattle to DIY. Then it’s time to use the farm’s vegetables to make winter soup with some local schoolchildren.

Back in the late 1700s Cragg Vale was the setting for one of the most audacious financial crimes in history. Counterfeit gold coins, forged by a criminal gang on an industrial scale, were at the heart of it. The criminals clipped the edges of gold guineas and made new gold coins from the clippings. The gang was called the Cragg Vale Coiners and their leader was known as ‘King’ David Hartley. Joe Crowley, meets a direct descendant of ‘King’ David, has a go at making gold coins and finds out how the criminal gang was finally brought to justice.  

Adam is travelling back in time to get a taste of some traditional farming methods with a modern twist. Robert Sampson breeds and trains Percheron horses on his Hampshire farm. Originally used to pull artillery guns during World War One, he now uses this breed to manage his 265 acre farm. As Adam discovers, Robert adapts traditional and modern day farming equipment and that enables him and his family to continue farming using the horses.

Ellie travels part of the Stanza Stones poetry trail taking in West Yorkshire’s breathtaking landscape. On a frozen Ilkley Moor, by the Puddle stone, Ellie meets stone carver Pip Hall who spent a year carving the stanza stone poems. Ellie tries her hand at carving before continuing her journey down the moor towards the last stone on the trail, Beck. She then meets young poet Poppy Turner, whose poetry was inspired by the project and won her a national award.

Tom Heap investigates predictions from scientists that the disease, Blue Tongue, could reach British shores again this year – and asks whether we are ready to combat it. Tom gets special access to a new research centre at The Pirbright Institute – a world-leading centre for research into diseases that affect animals. Here he finds out how a warming climate could bring fresh threats to the UK – not just blue tongue, but a variety of different diseases that can affect farm animals, horses and even humans.