Well, the best place to start this walk
is about a mile / 2 kms outside of Haworth
just off the road that leads over Lower Laithe reservoir.
If you can't park here, well, you can make your way a bit further up
Penistone Hill and then come back to this spot.
Now, the overwhelming reason for doing this walk is
to visit Top Withens.
It's the farmhouse on the bleak moorland up there
which was Emily Bronte's inspiration
when she came to create the home for her brooding anti-hero,
Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights.
Now, it says it's about 2.5 miles / 4 kms, so let's get going.
Much of what we see on the walk today,
would have been familiar to the Bronte sisters.
apart from, I suppose, Lower Laithe reservoir,
they didn't start building that until 1914.
One of the attractions though for the Brontes
would have been to visit a spa spring
which was discovered up here on the moors
in the early 19th century.
There's a popular myth that has grown up
that somehow, Haworth is a remote community.
But it's not really true at all:
the town of Keighley, which in its time has been a textile
town, an engineering town,
it's only three miles / 5 kms away.
And over here, of course, you've got the village of Stanbury.
But the Brontes didn't live long enough
to see the creation of the Worth Valley Railway,
that began in 1867.
And that really opened this area up.
And given and even greater boost by that
wonderful movie, The Railway Children.
Well, this well defined track
for walkers, is called Enfield Side Track
and would have been created, I suppose, when all this land
over here, to our right, was taken over
for enclosures.
And the fields were defined by
these wonderful dry stone walls.
With a sharp frost you've got to take is easy down here:
it gets very icy.
Well this dean channels water off the moors
and it was a spot well-known to Charlotte.
Inded, in November...
1854 she wrote...
"Arthur called to take me for a walk...
we set-off not intending to go far.
But though wild and cloudy, it was fine in the morning.
When we got about half a mile on the moors
Arthur [Bell Nicholls, husband] suggested the idea of the waterfall.
After the melted snow, he said
it would be fine.
I'd often wished to see it, in its winter power.
So, we walked on.
It was fine indeed.
A perfect torrent racing over the rocks
white and beautiful".
Well, the thing is,
just beside the falls,
there's this strange rock.
And it's called the Bronte Chair, indeed the Bronte sisters
are reputed to have sat here and written
some of their earlier poetry.
And just opposite the Bronte Chair
there's a plaque set into the rock here
which contains the words:
O Lord, How manifold are they works!
In wisdom hast thou made them all:
The earth is full of thy riches.
That's from Psalm 104.
And there's a little verse underneath which reads:
Father Almighty, wonderful Lord, Wonderous creator
ever adored; Wonder of nature, sing praises to you,
Wonder of Wonders. I may praise too.
Well, this clapper bridge is not the one the Brontes would have known
because the original was washed away in a flood of 1989.
This replacement was built in 1990.
Well, from now, on up to Top Withens,
the going gets a bit steeper.
Well, if you want proof
that the appeal of the Brontes spreads
far beyond these shores, then there it is:
the signpost for Top Withens in English and...
Japanese!
Well here it is: Top Withens!
Or, as it was originally known: Top o' the Withins.
The original building probably dates back to the late 16th century.
And certainly, at the time of the Brontes,
would have been the most desireable of residences
anywhere on these moors!
Let's go and have a look!
Well, the view of the moors, from Top Withens,
is best described by Emily herself
in the opening pages of Wuthering Heights:
"Wuthering...
being a significant provincial adjective,
descriptive of the atmospheric tumult
to which it's station is exposed in stormy weather.
Pure, bracing ventilation
they must have up there at all times,
indeed:
one may guess the power of the north wind
blowing over the edge,
by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house;
and by a range of gaunt thorns
all stretching their limbs one way,
as if craving alms of the sun".
Well, here we are: this plaque
placed by the Bronte Society back in 1964,
says it all really: Top Withens.
This farmhouse has been associated with Wuthering Heights
the Earnshaw home in Emily Bronte's novel.
The buildings, even complete, bore
no resemblance to the house she described.
But, the situation may have been in her mind
when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights.
Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte's only novel.
But, despite that, it's probably one of the the best known and
most widely read in English literature.
And, of course, since Emily's death
it has had new life because of the various films
and television adaptations
and even that No 1 hit by Kate Bush.
I suppose one of the most evocative scenes in the novel
is set here, in the house,
when the narrator and Heathcliff's
tenant of Thruscross Grange, Mr Lockwood,
gets marooned here after a blizzard
and he has to spend a night in the house
but he is awoken by a branch tapping on the window...
"I muttered...
knocking my knuckles through the glass
and stretching an arm out
to seize the importunate branch;
instead of which,
my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
the intense horror of nightmare came over me:
I tried to draw back my arm,
but the hand clung to it,
and a most melancholy voice sobbed,
'Let me in,
let me in!'
'Who are you?'
I asked,
struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself.
'Catherine Linton,'
it replied.
Why did I think of Linton?
I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton
'I'm come home:
I'd lost my way on the moor!'
As it spoke,
I discerned obscurely,
a child's face looking through the window.
Terror made me cruel;
and, finding is useless to attempt shaking the creature off,
I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane,
and rubbed it to and fro until the blood ran down
and soaked the bedclothes:
and still it wailed,
'Let me in!'
and maintained its tenacious grip,
almost maddening me with fear.
'How can I!'
I said at length.
'Let me go, if you want me to let you in!'
The fingers relaxed,
I snatchd mine through the hole,
hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramind up against it,
and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer.
I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour;
yet, the instant I listened again,
there was the doleful cry moaning on!
'Begone!'
I shouted. 'I'll never let you in,
not if you beg for twenty years.'
'It is twenty years,'
mourned the voice:
'Twenty years.
I've been a waif for twenty years!'