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.

Winchester FTW!

Thus end my dream of becoming Mrs. Corene Firth-Brown-Darcy. The lovely city of Winchester proved (after careful, painstaking examination) to be 100% Colin Firth Free. But then I read the chilling saga of It's Hard to Be Colin Firth and realized it was probably for the best.

Winchester's raison d'etre is the spectacular Winchester Cathedral that you can almost make out in the fog if you squint and cross your eyes like your trying to make out one of those ridiculous Magic Eye 3D pictures (which I suspect, weren't actually secret pictures at all but rather, a clever ploy to induce myopia in the populace sponsored by the Oculists of America).

Trust me, the Cathedral is there. All roads lead to it. All postcards feature it. All street signs urge you to go there and buy t-shirts.

Winchester Cathedral in all its Protestant glory.

When the Reformation rolled on down to Winchester, the angry proto-Protestants went around town destroying pretty things that reminded them of Catholicism to make their churches as dull as possible, like you do. And, while staring into the dead, cold eyes of the Grinning Unicorn of Sheer Unbridled Evil, I suddenly felt the urge to burn me some graven images.

If your tastes do not run in the Evil Unicorn vein, the only other reason to visit Winchester Cathedral is the grave of Jane Austen.

Jane Austen is buried under the floor and yes, I did walk over her grave several times to take a picture of this: Her tacky gilt sign that was erected by readers long after her death, who obviously spent all their good taste in literature and had none left over for the selection of tasteful memorial plaques.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run

...Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue...

- John Keats, Ode to Autumn

While walking past the river Itchen, John Keats was inspired to write his "Ode to Autumn."
While walking past the river Itchen, I was inspired to find the nearest rhubarb pie and eat it.

And this is why I don't write poetry.

Other sites of Winchester include "Arthur's" Round "Table." This faux tableau was built by order of Henry VIII whose likeness was used to paint to the portrait of "Arthur" to convince the Southerners that he was the descendant of the mythic king and so they could all just shut up and do exactly what he said.

The Southerners, having more than one brain cell between them, did not. Maybe if Henry had looked more like this:

Things might have turned out differently.

The grossly misnamed Wolversey Castle. I would be curious to find the Winchester County Council's definition of "castle" as what they have termed a castle is not remotely castle-like.

This, my dear friends of the Winchester County Council, is a wall.

A really, boring wall.


Abbey House where Benedictine nuns waited out the French revolution, spending their time singing, dancing and snogging Christopher Plummer.


Winchester's tribute to Equus.


A slight hike up St. Giles seemed like a brilliant idea at the bottom of the hill...


At the top of the hill, not so much. I had forgotten that all important weather/sight seeing equation: Fog = You can't see things.

Narnia!

King Alfred whose only purpose in English history is as some sort of obscure reference to bread that no one can explain to me.

Beware! Old People!

I Go to Essex - So You Don't Have To

The southeast county of Essex is full of sunshine and fond of irony.


For example, when you book accommodation recommended to you by the Maldon County District website for the small town of Maldon, you would expect this Maldon B&B to be in Maldon.

Wrong-o!

The Maldon B&B that you booked through the Maldon County website's recommendations for the small town of Maldon is actually in (you guessed it) Langford.

This is called situational irony.


For an example of verbal irony, let me introduce you to an "Essex Sidewalk."

That's right! There isn't one! It's just you and the road. And the angry motorists screaming towards London like those little X-Wings from Star Wars.


Here's an Essex sidewalk at night.

Essex doesn't believe in sidewalks. They are unmanly and bad form. However, my adherence to the standards of gentlemanly conduct took a severe blow when I realized that my "Maldon" B&B was actually a thirty minute walk from Maldon and it was dark out.

I'll just let Sherlock Holmes express my feelings on this one:



But using my mobile phone as a flashlight, I eventually made it to Langford without twisting my ankle and being eaten by wolves.


I was greeted at my B&B by the traditional English greeting of "Oh. Just you then?" by the most anemic, disappointed, vampire-ish looking man in creation who took me to my room where I slowly realized I was Completely...


Surrounded...


... By graveyards.

When the zombie apocalypse strikes, this is not where I want to be.

Langford apparently consists of three living people and every dead person who ever died in Essex.

There wasn't even a restaurant or pub, so I ate the curtains.


I didn't even sleep as the church bell next to my window rang on the hour letting me know exactly how long I had before I would join the anemic man's blood-sucking retinue.


After escaping from the B&B of the Damned, I trudged back to Maldon in the sunlight and was pleasantly surprised.


Maldon is a haven for crusty old sea dogs and full of men who look like they escaped from an advertisement for Fisherman's Friend. As I was walking towards the harbour there was an old captain singing a sea chantey dressed like the little cartoon man from the fish sticks box who tipped his hat at me.


Theodore the Tugboat's scuzzier cousin, Brent.


The harbour was littered with free rowboats.


Whoever thought the sky line would be improved by adding an anachronistic bell steeple on top of this lovely Norman church deserves to by thrown out of it.


Byrhtnoth, leader of the Anglo-Saxons who lost the Battle of Maldon by being too nice. Keeping a tactical geographic advantage against raiding Vikings was simply not sporting.


WWI stained glass windows in the Maldon church.


Little old men puttering around with their motorized model boats. It took all my self-control not to run over and pinch their cheeks.



Next week on Maid's Day Off...


I head to Winchester to find this man.
Hopefully, he'll still be wearing his silly hat.