The Moooooooors!

Some kids dream of going to Disneyland and getting their picture taken with an underpaid employee on the verge of heat stroke, dressed as Mickey Mouse.
I have always dreamed of wandering the moors, pulling out my hair screaming: "CAAAAAATHY! CAAAATHY! THE MOOOORS! THE MOOOORS!" at the top of my lungs.


MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.


Welcome to Haworth! (HAH-WUTH) - whose entire point of existence is to be the tragic, isolated, windswept home of Charlotte, Emily, Anne Bronte and their degenerate brother (who, on top of being a drunk and an opium addict, was also a crappy painter).


The Bronte Parsonage Museum - where you too can thrill at the sight of Charlotte Bronte's reading glasses, the fireplace grate where Anne used to rest her tiny feet, and Emily Bronte's death couch. Emily Bronte romantically died of consumption after refusing to stop baking bread and/or see a doctor.


The church where Patrick Bronte preached during his breaks from cutting his wife's nice dresses into shreds because they would encourage vanity, denying permission for Charlotte to get married, being a Tory, and throwing the shoes of his small, cold and wet children into the fire because comfort was a sin.


The parsonage is located on the top of a very steep hill that is covered in dead people and the famous flat stone covered coffins which were banned in the late 19th century because the airless conditions in these coffins prohibited decomposition of the corpses leading to lots of people being weirded out and disease.


Haworth is home to many, many discos. You cannot pass a window or a street here without being informed of a hot, hot disco being held in the legion on Sunday night. Why, oh why did I leave my purple spandex bodysuit in Canada?


Then there are the MOOOOORS.



I want to live my life on the moors in a little stone cottage writing crazy novels that involve a lot on anti-heroes with bad hair and a penchant for decorating with dead dogs. I want to be buried on the moors (hopefully after dying of natural causes. There's no point in being murdered in the North since the Smiths broke up).

I love the moors.


I decided to do the 10 km hike to Wuthering Heights because if I came all the way to Bronte country without seeing the heights that are wuthering, I would never forgive myself. And it was worth the sheep dodging and the fence climbing and the rock slipping.


The moors are incredible. All you can see is wild moorland valleys and peaks and a lone tree braving the elements and all you hear is the wind through the heath and the bubbling of water in the distance.


That and the two old guys wearing red who I was tailing to make sure I had someone in screaming distance in case I was attacked by the Heathcliff.


The turret in the distance is the prettiest water treatment plant in creation.


The Bronte Waterfall (Okay, not really. But the actual Bronte Waterfall was about three hours out of my way and I had a seven hour train journey back home, so I decided that this was good enough).


The Bronte Bridge.


Mysterious rock formations.


I bewitched a horse!

More desolation.


The winner of "The Stream that Looks the Least Drinkable in the Entire North of England."


And finally I arrived at Wuthering Heights!

According to the angry plaque erected by the Bronte Foundation, this isn't actually the house that inspired Emily to write Wuthering Heights. A fact which they don't tell you until you've climbed the 10 km.

The Bronte Foundation is made up of angry old spoil sports in tatty jumpers who can take their plaque and bury it somewhere ecologically undamaging.


The road home (or at least to the bus station).


My best Jane Eyre impression.