Day 14: "Heathcliff! Stop yer moanin' and coom inside for yer tea...."

Here's a pic of our trusty steed, the Renault Captur. A nifty little number but it has the irritating habit of turning its engine off whenever one stops at lights, roundabouts etc. This is supposed to be a fuel-saving measure. It frightened the life out of us when it first happened and we eventually realised that pressing the clutch would make it spring to life again, so that is what we do.  Not sure if any cars do this in Australia. Mine certainly doesn't. 

Today we rose bright and early (as always - sun's up at 5am!) and hit the road for West Yorkshire.  Our plan was to visit the Bronte family parsonage (now a museum)

where Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte lived with their father, brother and aunt. For some reason I always imagined the parsonage as being on the top of a windswept hill on the moors, isolated from the town.  Pretty silly of me really - it needed to be accessible to parishioners and so is sensibly located in the Haworth CBD.

It's a quaint village with very narrow, cobbled streets and houses and businesses cheek by jowl against the cobbles. No footpaths to speak of but quite a few village squares for pedestrians.


The house was quite charming and has been beautifully restored by the Bronte Society, which has a number of rich benefactors who have bought and donated known Bronte furniture and other original Bronte possessions  to the house/museum.  The most recent acquisition was received only in January this year - a large table in the sitting room where the Bronte sisters workshopped their writing with each other.

It's very sad that they died so young. Two older siblings had died from tuberculosis contracted at a  boarding school for the daughters of impoverished clergymen when Charlotte, Anne and Emily were very small. Charlotte alluded to this in 'Jane Eyre'.  And one of them (I forget which) actually taught at a similar school, where she spent an unhappy year before returning home, apparently saying the school dog was the only thing she enjoyed about her time there.

The Bronte sisters were well-educated for the time but the family was poorish, and with the exception of their father, they all died quite young.  Their father Patrick actually complained to the health authorities in London about the lack of sanitation and mortality rates in Haworth and a report was commissioned that found 40 per cent of children in Haworth did not live to see their sixth birthday, average life expectancy was 22 and the graveyard next to Rev Bronte's church was so full of graves, often fresh, that it was a health hazard.  While Haworth has a certain quaint charm now, it's not hard to see that life there was once pretty grim for the working and peasant classes.

Forgive me if you already know all this Bronte history.  Just two more things!  Rev Bronte was originally from Northern Ireland and his surname was actually Brunty until he changed it.  Good call I reckon.   Also, for many years the family had a servant whose name was Tabitha Aykroyd, one of many variant spellings of my surname. 
     

This is a not a particularly great streetscape but gives an idea of the village. We had lunch in the Haworth Steam Brewery pub (with the bunting on the left) - soup and a sambo with a noice cup of Yorkshire tea.  Cheapish  and cheerful.  (If I was on Instagram I would, of course, have provided a photo of our meal.)

Getting into Haworth was pretty challenging,with all those narrow streets and a sat nav that momentarily had the vapours, but it was like a six-lane free way compared with Hebden Bridge, six miles oop the road.

I had wanted to go to Hebden Bridge and nearby Heptonstall because those towns are closely associated with the origins of my surname.  I didn't have anything particular in mind, just a meander around to soak up the atmosphere.  Ah, if only! But we learned a valuable lesson. Never go to Hebden Bridge on a bank holiday!  I suspect the fact that we got to Haworth so early (just after 10am) meant we were first-in-
best-dressed there. But expecting a leisurely saunter around Hebden Bridge at 1pm on a public holiday Monday was a tad too optimistic.  I shall hand over to Geoff now, who has mastered the art of squeezing down a very long two-way street approximately 2 metres wide with bumper to bumper traffic both ways and with parked cars making the experience even more hair-raising.

We'd like to able to give a full report about Hebden Bridge, but alas ... The journey into the town was a challenge, to say the least.  The last several hundred yards took about half an hour.  At one point we folded the exterior rear view mirrors inwards, lest they got knocked off by cars inching past on one side or by ancient rock walls on the other.  I'm sure everyone else on the road was quite accustomed to these conditions, but not us.  On arrival at the centre of the village, we found that fully half the population of the north of England had the same idea as we did about how to spend the bank holiday. It really wasn't a hard decision to bail out.  There was nowhere to park between the village and Halifax, several miles distant.  Speaking of which, this area is rich in history for north-of-England Rugby League fans.  Apart from Halifax, we also went through Keighley and saw signs to Wakefield and Rochdale. I'm sure there's an organised tour you can take, which hopefully I can do one day.  But for today, there was no stop in Hebden Bridge or Heptonstall, although we did actually drive across the bridge over the canal itself.  I'm told it's a great spot, but will have to take the word of those who've actually seen it. 

After the satnav guided us home through the indoostrial north, we decided the time was right for a refreshment en route, in Stamford Bridge to be precise.  A pint of Wells Bombardier for him and a half of Aspall cider for her.  The Wells Bombardier website has a RIP for Rik Mayall, who we assume was a fan.

Speaking of Stamford Bridge, we've established that it has nothing to do with Chelsea's home ground of the same name, which is apparently a corruption of a local Fulham landmark stream and bridge originally called either Stanford or Sandford.  But not Stamford.  Isn't this blog a treasure trove of historical exotica?  Where else would you find this stuff?

Rocketting off  - hooroo for now from Bishop Wilton, Yorkshire! xxx