It’s Wuthering Heights – so where’s Cathy and Heathcliff?

Sunday 3 June – Hebden Bridge to Colne – Day 40

Today we moved into Bronte territory.

After yesterday’s cloud we started the day in sunshine, walking up the Calder Valley, following the river through a narrow band of woodland for several kilometres. After the high treeless moorland of the past few days, it was a refreshing change.

As the woodland came to an end we climbed out of the valley, firstly back into farmland, past a couple of reservoirs, then higher into moorland to once again rejoin the Pennine Way. At one point we stopped for a while, sitting and enjoying the peace and solitude and views over the heather, with next to no wind. The warm air felt very humid, and the cloud thickened up, but no rain eventuated.

Our path took us over the top of Withins Height. In the distance we could see the village of Haworth, well-known for its Bronte connections, and not long after we passed the ruins of Top Withins farmhouse which, according to the signage, may well have been the inspiration for the setting of Wuthering Heights. The farmhouse itself is too small to have been the house described in the book, but the views are very close to those that Bronte wrote about. We looked in vain for Cathy or Heathcliff or even a Kate Bush warbling on, but to no avail…

Continuing down off the moor we passed two more reservoirs (my, do they love their reservoirs in this part of the country!). As the place we are staying at is off the Pennine Way, we had to abandon it for a while and instead pick up the Bronte Way, echoing the Bronte sisters’ regular trips along wild paths to Lancashire.

At first it was a very rough and haphazard path, and we decided to “do the road thing”. After five minutes of dodging some very fast vehicles and with the encouragement of one motorist, who actually stopped her Landrover to tell us how dangerous that stretch of road was (‘they drive like maniacs’), we wisely abandoned it and rejoined the Bronte Way. Fortunately, from that point on it was a very good path. We followed it down a valley, alongside a stream, then through the village of Wycoller and on to Laneshaw Bridge at the east of Colne, our destination.

We had known nothing about Colne or indeed the area of Pendle, but were interested to read about its fascinating history. In 1612 a number of men and women were accused of witchcraft, found guilty at a trial, and subsequently hanged. It appears to have been quite a famous case, though we were unaware of it prior, and to this day a number of businesses reference it. There is another walkway, the Pendle Way, which shadows the Bronte Way for a while, and whose symbol is a witch on a broomstick.

It also appears that Colne is a real centre for live music and events and is increasingly compared with Hebden Bridge.

It’s amazing how much there is to learn about and experience in even the most apparently out-of-the-way places!

Distance today: 26km

Going up Withins Heights