There is something undeniably captivating about the ravaged farmhouse high on the barren moors above the West Yorkshire village of Haworth. Even without its questionable heritage, the ruins of Top Withens farm would exert a strange pull on the imagination. Its hopelessly isolated position gives this most bleak of literary landmarks a dramatic presence that stiffens the hairs on the back of your neck. As with the sea, it is possible to look around you and feel a constitutional sense of loneliness and despair on these moors, as if there is some integrated emotional and physical source of destructive power eroding your resolve as inevitably as the wind shapes the rocks around you.
Walking on the Yorkshire moors can be a lonely affair. I have written before of the solitary nature of male hikers, of the parallels between the eremitic walker and the isolated mountains he climbs, and how he can just pee wherever he likes. That’s the best bit actually. Or at least it was until I took to walking with a young woman. There was talk of the two of us becoming a couple at one time. We discussed it in very flat, practical Yorkshire terms, almost as if we were interviewing for a job, but it turned out that we both owned good boots and warm underwear. It seemed a bit wasteful to proceed with an affair in the light of such a discovery, and so instead we took to the hills together. Naturally I began to think of her as my apprentice, someone to whom I could pass on my unparalled knowledge of the countryside.
However my days of peeing against stonewalls with the carefree abandon of a stray dog came to an end. Now we have to use expensive public toilets in places like Haworth, home of the Bronte Burger and tourist signs in Japanese. We don’t actually like Haworth that much. We like the idea of Haworth, but somewhere along the line the idea developed a subplot and a romantic interest and a supporting cast of outlaw sheep that lurk around Top Withens ready to mug the pilgrims for grub. It is undeniably pretty though, especially around Christmas time, when the steam train made famous in the classic film adaption of E Nesbitt’s the Railway Children chuffs importantly up the Worth Valley from Keithley. It is hard not to be charmed by the nostalgic sight of an iron locomotive belching steam across the platform of a gaslit railway station.
And of course the lovely, desolate moors are never far away.
I decided Top Withens would make an ideal location to take some photographs. At the very least I would get to stand atop the ruins and shout, “Heeeeathcliff!” into the raging wind, an ambition have wisely kept to myself for a number of years. Alas as we neared the old farmhouse we could see that the place was littered with other walkers. Apart from a man who was being stealthily mugged by a gang of sheep, there was also a large party of elderly ramblers up there. I would be lucky to get a single photograph that didn’t feature a crocheted bobble hat somewhere in the frame, or the face of someone mouthing the words, “Enid, did you pack those iced finger buns or did I?’
My fears turned out to be somewhat premature. We were a little way from the summit when the party of elderly ramblers decided to move on. Tops were quickly screwed on thermos flasks, scarves were tightened around cold necks, confused old gentlemen were gently turned to face the right way, and off they went, snaking down the hill, every one of them smiling and chatting as they passed.
You see a lot of this in Britian at the weekend. What a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. So much nicer than stagnating in your Parker Knoll batwing chair with just your furry slipper-boots poking out from under a tartan blanket, watching a black and white western on television and wondering why nobody ever visits.
The mugging victim was also leaving. Sheep jeered him as he plodded dejectedly down the hill. And just like that, everyone was gone and we were suddenly alone up there, up where the wind blows all the time with a noise like the howling cries of unhappy ghosts, up where the sheep are bold enough to rummage through your bag when you’re not looking.
That’s the thing about Yorkshire. One minute we are trudging through the dark Pennine hills under sagging great skies the colour of bad news, two tiny chromatic dots moving imperitively towards the faintly glowing lights of some craggy northern mill town. The next minute we can be found in the snug of some or other pub pressed as close to the fire as we dare, pongy steam rising from our damp socks, urgently scanning the menu for two-for-one special offers. Yorkshire is a big county – enormous by English standards – but they have thoughtfully built it around an incalcuable number of fine pubs. They span the great moors and hills like stepping stones.
The party of elderly ramblers were now just a thin ribbon of colour winding along the lower moor. We watched them for a while, then the apprentice turned to me with a thoughtful expression and said, “You know, there’s a sheep’s head in my rucksack.”
“It’s not often you get to say that,” I said, genuinely impressed.
“Do you think we’ll still be walking when we’re as old as those other people?”
“Almost certainly,” I said. I pulled the sheep’s head out of the apprentice’s rucksack. It came reluctantly, as it if had roots.
“Will I still be the apprentice?”
“Almost certainly,” I said. We packed up our things and shouldered our bags. “You can’t overtake experience in this game.”
With that she gently turned me to face the right way, and we set off walking again.
