Brontë country

I’ve just spent a week in Yorkshire visiting my parents, who live in the shadow of Ilkley Moor. It’s not far from Haworth where the Brontë sisters lived. We drove up in warm sunshine. Then, in the space of 24 hours, snow fell and the high roads were blocked. I went up onto the moors and the freezing winds and snow were coming in horizontally at gale force. I played here as a child. Later I used to go for long runs across the heathlands. There is nothing like them on earth. While there are places that are jaw-droppingly spectacular, there is something in these bleak empty spaces, lowering clouds and long lines of dry stone walls that gets deep inside. I understand why the Brontës wrote the books they did. The word ‘Wuthering’ comes from Old Norse and is the sound of a strong roaring wind. Standing among these rocks always makes me feel like re-creating Blake’s painting Glad Day, or the Dance of Albion, snow or no snow, but I’d probably get arrested. Anyway, here are the photos I took.