Howarth in the Worth Valley. - Thursday 11/7/24
Leaving Barnoldswick in the morning we headed for Keighley, to meet up with Peter and Janet, some friends who live nearby.
Like Fred and Lorraine, we had got to know Peter and Janet on some of our trips to Goa, as they were also regular visitors to our winter sun destination.
After parking up in their driveway, we sat down to lunch and put the world to rights. At our age, a lot of this consisted of comparing ailments and how things had changed since we last met.
After lunch, we called a taxi and went to nearby Haworth for a pub crawl.
Haworth is famous for being the home of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte and Emily, who lived in the parsonage. Their father, Patrick Bronte was the local parish priest.
In the mid 1800s, life expectancy in Haworth was poor, at around 28 years. 40% of children died before reaching age 6.
Much of this can be attibuted to the generally unsanitary conditions of the times, but in particular it was found to be residues from the graveyard and slaughter house contaminating
the water supply. Both the Bronte sisters died by the age of 31.
The moors above Haworth are the setting for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Ponden Hall is reputedly Thrushcross Grange and a ruin called Top Withens the setting for the farmstead.
Haworth railway station is now part of The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, running regular steam trains between Keighley and Oxenhope, and was featured in the film "The Railway Children".
As we had visited Haworth before (on the steam train), we had been in The Parsonage Museum so did not bother with the Bronte stuff again, concentrating on the pubs instead.
Our taxi driver dropped us off at the top of the hill, so we went in The Old White Lion, followed by The Kings Arms, then The Black Bull.
Wandering down the hill, we sampled
The Fleece Inn and finally The Haworth Old Hall Inn, where we called another taxi for the short trip back to Janet and Peters House.
The next day we said our goodbyes and left for nearby Hebden Bridge, a small town at the bottom of the steep sided Calder Valley. It was market day, and very busy. After walking around the market we had a coffee in a pavement cafe, then walked around the town for a while.
From Hebden Bridge we continued toward Lancashire again, to crown point, a place up on the moor above Burnley.
We had come here especially to view The Singing Ringing Tree, a wind powered panopticon sculpture.
The Singing Ringing Tree is made up of galvanised steel pipes which creates a ghostly wailing sound when the wind blows through them.
After taking a few photographs we hit the road again to our stop for the night, The Plough Inn, just outside Chester.