To the Brontë country and beyond

We had a really good time in Yorkshire even though we were only there for three days. The people were friendly, the scenery was superb, and the air itself was fresh, clean and a joy to breathe in. Because of the circumstances behind our visit, we were a little constrained as we were visiting family, and helping them say goodbye to a much-loved aunt, but we had most Thursday to ourselves, apart from a family get together in the evening, where we enjoyed a meal at the Shipley branch of Greene King’s Hungry Horse chain, which was a pub called the Noble Comb.

The place was cheap and cheerful, the food was well cooked, well presented and filling, and the staff, friendly efficient and accommodating. Wednesday was the day of the funeral, held at the local crematorium, nab wood, on the edge of ship play. It was a nice I touch it quite touching service presided over by a celebrant rather than priest exactly the type of farewell I prefer. Afterwards the wake took place at the nearby Mercure Hotel, which overlooks some attractive and well laid out gardens.

That evening we joined Eileen’s cousin and her husband for fish and chips, at their house, just below the famous Bingley Five Rise Locks, on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and the view across the valley to the hills on the other side, couldn’t have been more picture perfect. Matthew, Barry and I walked the short distance along the towpath, down into nearby Crossflatts, to pick up our supper from the local chippy, and this is where the northern preference for haddock, as opposed to cod, came into play. It's worth noting that cod wasn't even on the menu, in complete contrast to the situation in Kent, where cod is the normal offering, and what if the customer wants haddock, it has to be specially cooked.

It was a smashing piece of fish, and the chips were equally good, but Eileen’s cousin had another surprise up her sleeve by asking for a "scallop." This must be a posh fish and chip shop we thought, but her husband Barry soon put us straight, explaining that chip shop scallop was just a slice of potato coated in batter and deep fried. The other surprise was Barry’s request for a couple of tea cakes. This again confused me, as I thought a tea cake was something sweet and savoury – "Tunnock’s Tea Cakes" from Scotland sprang to mind, until our host again explained that a Yorkshire tea cake it's really just a large bap, similar in size and consistency to the barm cakes I remember enjoying during the years that I lived in Manchester.

The following morning, we drove the short distance to Haworth, the small attractive, stone built town, made famous by the Brontë sisters. We had stopped there on our last visit to Yorkshire, five years previously, although my first visit to the town was in the company of the previous Mrs Bailey and her parents. This would have been back in the late 1970s, and apart from calling in at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, I don't remember much else from that visit, although we did call in at and took a look around the local churchyard. This time around we also parked close to the churchyard and walked along stone paved path through the graveyard around the church and down into Haworth itself.

Confession time, despite all this exposure to the Brontë sisters - the town’s most famous literary residents, I've never read any of the novels written by Charlotte, Anne, and Emily, although I did make a half-hearted attempt with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I've read several books that have been hard to get into, but I'm afraid Emily's classic was beyond me, and I gave up after just couple of chapters. Perhaps I will give one of the other Brontë books a go sometime, although if I'm honest, Victorian melodramas aren't really my thing.

Walking down from the church and past the Black Bull pub we were beckoned over by the rather enterprising proprietor of the Apothecary Tea Rooms, who asked if we fancied a cup of tea. We got chatting and it turned out that he came from Plumstead, the area of south London where Eileen’s mother hailed from. After that, we couldn't really refuse, so we entered this character’s well-appointed premises, and ordered a pot of tea. Eileen had a teacake, her curiosity having been roused the previous evening, but as Matthew and I had enjoyed a full English breakfast earlier that morning the pair of us stuck to liquid refreshment only.

Suitably refreshed, we carried on down Main Street, the objective being, as far as I was concerned anyway, to seek refreshment of a stronger nature, in the form of some Timothy Taylors excellent beers at the Fleece Inn, at the bottom of the hill. On the way down, we stopped for a look at one of the cottages, No. 62 to be precise, as this tiny two up three down, stone-built mid terrace cottage, with the door opening more or less straight onto the street, was the house where Eileen’s aunt and uncle had not only spent the first years of their married life, but it was also where her cousin was born and brought up.

The family moved away from Haworth, as the town's reputation and popularity as a tourist attraction increased quite dramatically, and the settlement cease to be a normal workaday place to live. Instead the town became packed with dainty tea shops, souvenir shops and what I would loosely term as "Hippy shops" appealing to the alternative culture. The final straw for her aunt and uncles family, was when visitors began peering through the front window, or even attempting to get in, should they accidentally have left the door on the latch. They moved away, to the small settlement of Crossflatts on the edge of Bingley on the old road out towards Keighley.

A shame, because even though it must have been crowded in that tiny cottage, this attractive Yorkshire hillside small town seemed an idyllic place in which to live and raise a family. The photo above, shows a renovated house, but on our previous visit to Haworth the property was being renovated, and the interior totally gutted. From memory we were allowed a brief look inside, particularly after her cousin mentioned to the builders, the intimate family connection with the cottage.

Returning to the Fleece Inn for a moment, Mrs PBT’s decided that walking to the bottom of Main Street, would mean an equally lengthy, and rather steep descent, so I suggested we return to the top car park, drive down to the bottom of the village and find a place to park, closer to the pub. That was the plan, and it would have worked had we found a suitable car-park. Instead, we ended up driving out of Haworth and followed a road out of the village and across the moors.

The road continued climbing for some time, before descending back down into a green and fertile looking valley, only for the process to repeat itself. Before long we found ourselves on what felt like the "roof of the world," a situation which brought back memories from my time in Manchester, as student. Back then,  I made the occasional foray up into the surrounding Pennine Hills, in a bid to escape the confines of the city. We passed a number of attractive looking, stone-built pubs, clinging to the side of the hills. Several were bedecked with colourful window boxes and hanging baskets. I was really tempted to pull over and try a couple, and would have, had I not been driving.

We did eventually find a place to stop, right on top of one of the fells, and a spot which commanded a fine, all-round view of the surrounding country side.  After studying the map, I decided to continue in a roughly north-westerly direction, in order to pick up the A road into the Lancashire town of Colne. From there we could loop around the next group of hills, in the general direction of Skipton. We decided not to stop at the town which describes itself as “The Gateway to the Dales,” despite it looking an attractive place to explore. Instead, we continued back down towards Keighley and then Bingley, before arriving back at out hotel.

After parking the car, I decided to walk from the hotel, along to the Airedale Heifer, a large, and attractive stone-built brewpub, on the road between Bingley and Riddlesden. The Heifer is home to the Bridgehouse Brewery, but as I shall be writing a piece about the pub, later on, so we’ll leave this tale of our drive through the scenic fringes of West Yorkshire, back where we started from, at the Premier Inn, in Bingley.