A Walk to Top Withens

He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
— Emily Brontë

If you haven’t been to Haworth then I highly recommend it. While it is a beautiful little village, frozen in time, it is also world famous as being the place that the Brontë’s lived. There is a parsonage museum which is where they used to live and, more importantly, where they wrote Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and more.

On my last visit to Haworth it was winter and therefore I choose not to do the walk along the moors and visited the parsonage museum instead, which is really beautifully done and definitely worth the visit. However this time I was short on time and choose to focus on doing the walk that the Brontë sisters themselves did. Behind the parsonage is a moor. This is the one the sisters would walk on regularly and so one house on this moor is considered to be the inspiration for the house Wuthering Heights in Emily’s famous novel.

If you haven’t read Wuthering Heights, a loose summery is that it is a love story about a family who take in a stray boy, who falls in love with the daughter of this family but the family think that he is beneath her so make her marry someone else, who is ‘worthy’. In the future the stray boy seeks his revenge. It is a gothic novel and a good read.

So the walk I did was to Top Withens, the ruined house out in the middle of nowhere. I drove to the nearest point, parked the car and left. This is a walk of 6 miles, up and down so this walk is not for everyone, please bear that in mind. Along the walk there were breathtaking views, we passed the Brontë waterfalls and bridge (not sure why they are so named, I assume purely because the Brontë’s used them and passed them in their walk). But my favourite art of the walk was how peaceful it is out there. There is a lack of trees so you don’t hear the usual twitterings of birds that you do in the country, you do hear the occasional sheep as they seem to roam free over the moors.

I would recommend taking a camera/your phone, some water and some food for a break once you reach Top Withens. We forgot water and food! But luckily I did take my camera and got some lovely pictures, so I hope you enjoy and are inspired to do this walk. Let me know if you have already 🙂