I always forget that this topic in is here, so over the next few weeks (if I remember), I'm going to stick a few topics in of **** I've been doing over the last year or so.
Anyway, first up is the Haworth area from about a month ago. Basically, I'd been out in Leeds the night before with a friend, Laurence, and we'd decided to head out here as neither of us had been before. We had a great time; we haven't spoken since!
A quick train ride from Leeds to Keighley takes you to an older "tourist" line that gets you to Haworth:
Haworth is just a small village, but it's where the Bronte sisters lived and wrote all their novels. It's pretty commercial these days, but still really nice.
Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) along with other members of the family are buried in a vault under the church. Anne is buried in Scarborough, so I got the CRED when I lived there.
Just behind the church is Haworth Parsonage, where the sisters grew up and did most of their writing. It's a museum now.
This is where things got a bit weird. The museum was closed, meaning there wasn't really anything else much to do in the immediate area. However, I knew that we could take a walk across the moors to "Top Withins", thought to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. ****, the whole moors were an inspiration for the novel, one of my favourites, so I really wanted to see it.
It's a bit of a trek (about 8 miles round trip), without a proper path for much of it, and no way to get there but to walk. We got all this information, plus a map from the tourist information office there. I WARNED Laurence that it would be heavy going, we had bags to carry, it would take a while, and that I was more than happy to go alone and meet up a bit later. Bearing in mind here, that I'd NEVER been here myself either, he decided to come along anyway.
The walk was gorgeous, and started out easily enough, with lots of nice views over the countryside.
Then it starts to get slightly more remote and the path starts to disappear:
You get to the Bronte waterfall and bridge. Apparently a favourite spot of Emily's, who used to sit on a rock here (looks a bit like a chair) and draft out ideas...
At this point, we were about half way there, and there's an option to take an easy path back to Haworth, or continue on. The path from this point was basically non-existent, so I tried to convince Laurence to take the path back and meet me later, since he was already starting to complain about the walk. Gavin, at this point, is starting to get annoyed.
Over the bridge and uphill is when you really start to hit the wiley, windy moors:
We'd been walking for about an hour since the bridge at this point (about 2 hours total), when the complaining just got too much. Dickhead was talking about going back, even though we were nearly there and there was an easier path back at the other side. I think my response was something along the lines of:
"What do you want me to do? I told you how hard it would be. I told you how long it would take, and I told you there were no proper paths. You were with me in the visitor centre when they explained all this to us. You got the exact same information as I did, so stop behaving like I'm your **** ing tour guide! I told you to just relax in the village if you thought it might be too much. I told you to head back when you started moaning at the waterfall. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? Phone for a **** ing helicopter to get you off the **** ing mountain?!
So, he stupidly and stubbornly turned back, which was the harder way to go, even though we were practically right there, and I carried on by myself without the BURDEN.
Pretty soon (literally about 5 minutes later), I could see it:
While there is no way this is Wuthering Heights (it's much too small), the location is spot on and it's likely that it was the inspiration for the setting of the novel.
I really loved it up here, especially since the annoying twat was gone and I could just have a bit of a Kate Bush moment all to myself up there.
And so began the long walk, blissfully and peacefully alone, back to Haworth...
Anyway, first up is the Haworth area from about a month ago. Basically, I'd been out in Leeds the night before with a friend, Laurence, and we'd decided to head out here as neither of us had been before. We had a great time; we haven't spoken since!
A quick train ride from Leeds to Keighley takes you to an older "tourist" line that gets you to Haworth:
Haworth is just a small village, but it's where the Bronte sisters lived and wrote all their novels. It's pretty commercial these days, but still really nice.
Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) along with other members of the family are buried in a vault under the church. Anne is buried in Scarborough, so I got the CRED when I lived there.
Just behind the church is Haworth Parsonage, where the sisters grew up and did most of their writing. It's a museum now.
This is where things got a bit weird. The museum was closed, meaning there wasn't really anything else much to do in the immediate area. However, I knew that we could take a walk across the moors to "Top Withins", thought to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. ****, the whole moors were an inspiration for the novel, one of my favourites, so I really wanted to see it.
It's a bit of a trek (about 8 miles round trip), without a proper path for much of it, and no way to get there but to walk. We got all this information, plus a map from the tourist information office there. I WARNED Laurence that it would be heavy going, we had bags to carry, it would take a while, and that I was more than happy to go alone and meet up a bit later. Bearing in mind here, that I'd NEVER been here myself either, he decided to come along anyway.
The walk was gorgeous, and started out easily enough, with lots of nice views over the countryside.
Then it starts to get slightly more remote and the path starts to disappear:
You get to the Bronte waterfall and bridge. Apparently a favourite spot of Emily's, who used to sit on a rock here (looks a bit like a chair) and draft out ideas...
At this point, we were about half way there, and there's an option to take an easy path back to Haworth, or continue on. The path from this point was basically non-existent, so I tried to convince Laurence to take the path back and meet me later, since he was already starting to complain about the walk. Gavin, at this point, is starting to get annoyed.
Over the bridge and uphill is when you really start to hit the wiley, windy moors:
We'd been walking for about an hour since the bridge at this point (about 2 hours total), when the complaining just got too much. Dickhead was talking about going back, even though we were nearly there and there was an easier path back at the other side. I think my response was something along the lines of:
"What do you want me to do? I told you how hard it would be. I told you how long it would take, and I told you there were no proper paths. You were with me in the visitor centre when they explained all this to us. You got the exact same information as I did, so stop behaving like I'm your **** ing tour guide! I told you to just relax in the village if you thought it might be too much. I told you to head back when you started moaning at the waterfall. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? Phone for a **** ing helicopter to get you off the **** ing mountain?!
So, he stupidly and stubbornly turned back, which was the harder way to go, even though we were practically right there, and I carried on by myself without the BURDEN.
Pretty soon (literally about 5 minutes later), I could see it:
While there is no way this is Wuthering Heights (it's much too small), the location is spot on and it's likely that it was the inspiration for the setting of the novel.
I really loved it up here, especially since the annoying twat was gone and I could just have a bit of a Kate Bush moment all to myself up there.
And so began the long walk, blissfully and peacefully alone, back to Haworth...
