MALVERN’S favourite donkeys were back in town for the familiar May Day weekend ceremony, but this year with a difference.

In previous years, the procession wended its way from the Abbey gateway up to St Ann's Well, where various ceremonies were performed enacting the history and myths of Malvern's healing water.

But this year, event founder Rev Val Needham, decided to confine it to the town centre in deference to her own ill health.

But much remained unchanged, with the familiar rescue donkeys enjoying the attention of admiring visitors before the ceremony took place, conducted by Rev Needham, Dom Peter Coombes and Rev David Wetton.

There was a reading of lines written by Rev Edmund Rea, a 17th-century vicar of Malvern, and after a ceremony with seashells and flowers, Thomas Coombes, aged 15, as the Oak King, engaged in symbolic contest with the Holly King, before joining Grace Giudicotti-Poplawska, eight, as the Young May Queen and lead the procession to the Malvhina Spout for a blessing ceremony.

Rev Needham said: "I'm very grateful to Grace and Thomas for their hard work, and in Thomas's case leadership, and I would also like to thank all those who have helped to make the event possible.

"Modern day lives can be so hectic that we can be swept along and almost forget all that has gone before us on these hills, so I hope our short enactment of some ancient beliefs around the changes of the season will reconnect us with that immense passage of history."

Proceeds from this year's event will go to the Penny Ha’Penny Horse and Pony Rescue Centre, run by Sue Penny and her family at Suckley, near Malvern.

Originally the money was to have been split between the rescue centre and Lucy’s Sanctuary for Holy Land Donkeys, but the latter has recently changed its charitable status and at the moment is not eligible for donations.