Distance: Around 11 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: Hard

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. from Dropbox

A direct walk up and across the south Pennine moors between the hilltop village of Heptonstall and Haworth, a small town made famous by the mid-19th Century literary superstars the Bronte sisters.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

“Heathcliff, it’s me…”

When it comes to literature set in West Yorkshire I’ve always been more of a David Peace fan than into the Bronte sisters. Which is far from a consensus opinion in my family, indeed my sister’s forenames are “Charlotte” and “Jane” (geddit?). So, despite TV adaptations aside from not being enormously familiar with the work, I have a longstanding albeit vague interest in the Bronte family and their hometown of Haworth.

On the cusp of autumn I went to stay in Heptonstall, a little village perched on the brow of the steep hill above where the Calderdale town of Hebden Bridge sits. Having spent a long weekend visiting in Leeds and doing a few walks (including the fascinating and equally literary Cragg Vale Coiners trail) in and around the Calder Valley, I decided that on my last day I’d do a longer walk, around 11 miles, over the moors to Haworth which I hadn’t visited before.

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Heptonstall and Hebden Bridge are cheek by jowl, with the former essentially a suburb of the latter. They remain rather distinctive places, however, because of the immensely steep hill of ancient hard South Pennine rock which separates them.

The trendy, by turns radical and bougie, with a slice of shear working class Calderdale cussedness clinging on, town of Hebden Bridge; sprawls along the banks of Hebden Water, the Rochdale Canal and the River Calder. It comprises 19th Century terraces and tenements, mills, warehouses and grand civic buildings of a similar vintage, with a smattering of newer houses and workplaces in-filling the gaps. It’s a pleasant place to spend an afternoon strolling, or an evening getting some food and visiting the many bars, pubs and occasional modernised workers’ club.

Hebden Bridge has a well served station with trains at least half hourly from early until around 23:00 at night, running to both Leeds and Manchester. From Hebden Bridge Station it takes roughly half an hour to walk the short, but steep, route up to Heptonstall. There are several to choose from, as well as a frequent bus service from the station for if you’d rather save your legs for later in the walk. Another alternative, if you want to by-pass Heptonstall entirely, is to follow the signposts for Hardcastle Crags from near the Station, along the roads, and pick up the walk from the National Trust car park which is situated about two miles from Hebden Bridge.

Heptonstall, in contrast, sits at the front of a small plateau on top of the hill. It has a quiet, tranquil, some would say eerie, village vibe despite being only several hundred metres from the bustle of Hebden Bridge below. Today Heptonstall is quite prosperous, but it is easy to imagine how isolated life must have been there prior to the construction of the step modern road linking it to the valley below.

In addition to its picturesque qualities, the key sites of Heptonstall are the grave of the American poet Silvia Plath, whose remains lie in the village’s small new cemetery. Which is also the place fans of the BBC TV show Happy Valley will recall as being where Becky, the daughter of Sarah Lancashire’s police sergeant principal character Catherine Cawood, is buried.

Besides famous real and fictional burials, the village’s ruined old parish church and it’s heavily knotted and jumbled graveyard is also well worth a visit. Just off the main street, almost uniquely, when a new parish church was constructed in the 1870s the old church was left almost intact. The ruins of St. Thomas á Becket Church stand to this day, with all the fittings stripped out, and virtually all the roof missing, but otherwise complete, in the shadow of its (more properly Protestant named) successor St. Thomas the Apostle.

Surrounding the ruined church are an incredible jumble of graves, some standing up right, others fallen. Amongst them is the grave of David Hartley the King of Coiners, who lived a few miles away at Cragg Vale, and was buried in 1770 shortly after his execution on the Knavesmire in York. This melee of gravestones, doubtless mirrors the soup of hundreds of years of human remains that sits below. A rare, remote survival of the Victorian mania for clearing such things up and making them ordered and sightly, which points to how graveyards were and how close people lived to the dead even 200 years ago.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. via Dropbox

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To leave Heptonstall, walk up Towngate, the village’s main street, past the Towngate Tearoom, post office, Cross Inn and the White Lion Pub. These front onto an unusually surfaced village main street which consists of the original stone sets. Once the amenities have been passed, there is a short steep climb past picturesque residential streets, until you reach a small primary school on your right hand side, which marks the edge of the village. Here the road’s name changes to Smithwell Lane.

Shortly after passing the school the road begins to level out as you reach the summit of the little ridge and plateau which Heptonstall sits on. From here there are excellent views to your left across Calderdale towards Stoodley Pike (a prominent obelisk erected to mark the end of the Napoleonic War) and a serene battery of wind turbines which stand somewhere close to the Lancastrian border.

Continue along the road for several hundred metres passing a small terrace of interwar looking houses.

Presently you come to a cross t-junction, which is surrounded by a cluster of older buildings.

Here you turn right leaving Smithwell Lane for Draper Lane and heading out into rolling countryside.

After several hundred metres walking along Draper Lane, on your left hand side, you come to a style with a waymarking sign.

This points to a path which leads a short way towards the start of a stand of trees. Cross the style and follow the path towards the trees.

This leads to a steep bank which is quite heavily wooded. To descend the bank follow the well trodden path which handily has had a lot of steps cut into it.

Be careful on the steep descent though, which takes several minutes, as there are exposed rocks and tree roots which might catch an unwary foot. Likewise, it is so damp in the woods that whilst the steps which have been cut are fairly sturdy, in places they have begun to rot away, leaving gaps which have to be carefully negotiated.

Near the valley floor you come out onto a track.

Turn right here and walk the short distance towards where another track, next to a cottage rises up towards you on your left.

Turn down this track and walk over a humped back bridge past a smattering of houses.

This brings you out onto a t-junction on a busier road. Opposite you there is a set of public toilets and a sign welcoming you to Hardcastle Crags and Gibson Mill, which is a National Trust site.

Head left in the direction of the Hardcastle Crags and Gibson Mill sign. Walk across the bottom of the National Trust car park.

Then turn left down a wide, well trodden track which leads through the trees next to a fast flowing river.

The river you are walking alongside is Hebden Beck which eventually flows out into the River Calder having run through Hebden Bridge two miles south of where you are now walking. If you decided to by-pass Heptonstall and walk to Hardcastle Crags this is where you can pick the route up.

Having joined the riverside path you follow it for the best part of 20 minutes walking in the direction of the National Trust property Gibson’s Mill. All of the land in the valley is owned and managed by the National Trust and it is a popular site for day trippers from across West Yorkshire. The steep sided wooded valley is quintessential to the area, where tree cover had survived a lot better than is the case in many other hilly parts of the country.

It was fast flowing streams like Hebden Beck which made Calderdale and the surrounding parts of Pennine Yorkshire and Lancashire some of the first places in the UK to industrialise. From the 1770s onwards, techniques for mass producing cloth in factories developed initially in Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley spread north to the Pennines where early capitalists constructed water powered mills by the score.

Gibson’s Mill – which you’ll reach presently – having scrambled across rocks and through less scrambly tree lined glades besides the river – was one such industrial complex.

A relatively small structure, and very serene today, the mill is a well maintained example of the kind of factory that made the southern Pennines a critical cradle for the industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Between 11:00 and 16:00 each day the National Trust operates a tearoom, enabling the purchase of drinks and light refreshments, if you have not brought any lunch with you. There’s also compost toilets open to all for if you need to relieve yourself at this stage.

Having reached Gibson Mill, turn right onto the forestry track style road which runs on the left hand side of the building.

Follow this past the large, elegant mill pond which stands behind the former factory, and up the sloping track into the woods.

A series of National Trust signs along the way advise you that this is the route to Hardcastle Crags.

After several hundred metres of walking you reach a signpost which points off the road towards the Hardcastle Crags. These are an impressive hard rock formation, essentially stranded in the middle of the valley amidst the trees, which you can walk along. I decided that instead of pressing on towards Haworth straight away, I’d take a short detour and go and have a look.

Having left the main road I walked up a fairly gently sloping path through the trees, up onto what was obviously a ridge.

As I walked the trees thinned out and became more spindly and more grasses, ferns and mosses appeared, clearly indicating that I was entering rockier terrain.

Having scrambled up and over several boulders I came out on top of the ridge and followed it along.

Presently coming across a series of quite impressive stacks of rock, an an excellent view across both sides of the valley.

From there I made a pretty steep descent – almost too steep at one point where I had to sit down on the ledge – and gingerly jump. Back down to the forestry road and on my way.

Back on the forestry road turn left and keep on walking uphill, heading up through the trees.

Presently several hundred metres after the Hardcastle Crags you emerge at a t-junction on a tarmacked road.

Here, turn left out on the road and keep walking.

After a short distance on this road there is a waymarking sign on your left pointing out onto a field.

Cross over into the field using the style provided.

This is the first proper bit of moorland on the route.

Perhaps realising that walkers are a mainstay of the local tourism economy, Calderdale Council, despite all of the budget cuts they’ve endured over the past decade, do a pretty good job of maintaining footpath signs and other walking infrastructure in the Borough.

Still I struggled with the next section of the walk crossing very boggy terrain, which wasn’t especially well waymarked.

The first section of the path, clearly marked out by waymarks, was clear enough, and aided by duck boards at some key points.

However, admittedly not helped by the fact that I was walking at a time of year when the hardy moorland grasses in the field were pretty high, I lost the track somewhat and found myself trying to rejoin it and find the waymarking posts on a very wet hillside.

A walker in proper boots – which I wasn’t wearing instead having opted for trainers – might have felt more confident just ploughing across the wetter bits of land, but I was having to gingerly pick my way.

I thought that I had picked up the waymarked route for a bit. Only to realise that I had been led astray by a line of old fence posts.

I did manage to find it in the end, however.

But eventually, having taken rather longer than I’d have liked, I reached the top of the hill and walked along the ridge a short way to a style leading into a neighbouring field.

From here I turned left and walked across firmer ground in the direction of a small obelisk (a popular feature on the hills around Hebden Bridge it seems) on top of a hill in the distance.

To do so I found and followed the ruts of a vehicle track, presumably a path used by the sheep farmers whose livestock graze the hills.

Nearing the base of the hill with the obelisk I turned left following footpath signs to walk through a series of large dry stoned walled sheep enclosures.

Presently, coming to the base of the hill I joined a sturdier seeming footpath.

I followed this a short way around the bottom of the hill to a gate which I walked through.

The next part of the route, which is very easy to follow, and a lot quicker to walk than the preceding section follows an old drovers route and packhorse route.

The path comprises part of the South Pennine Packhorse Way and is relatively busy with long distance walkers.

Heading along the track, the route is lined with dry stone walls created to mark out the track stop animals being driven along with, whether in a bygone age, or today escaping across the hillside.

The views as you walk along across the valley are pretty spectacular. Both of the valleys beside you and back the way you have come towards the National Trust woodland at Hardcastle Craggs and the distant tower of St. Thomas the Apostle in Heptonstall.

After a steep walk down, past an interesting ruined farm, the packhorse and drovers route joins another.

Turn left here, walking past another old farm building, seemingly partially still in use as a barn and continue along the route.

Keep walking along the old road for about a mile.

Down below you on Crimsworth Dean Beck, the river which runs down the dale below, is Lumb Hole Falls. This waterfall forms the backdrop to Ted Hughes’ poem “Six Young Men”.

Given the views as you walk along, steadily heading down towards the bottom of the valley, it is easy to see how writers and artists of all kinds have been inspired by the landscape, blended as it is between wild elements and extensive human cultivation for hill farming.

Presently, the path you are following joins a tarmacked road.

Following the footpath signs turn left and walk up this tarmacked road.

It is very steep with a couple of trees poking up incongruous alongside the banks and dry stonewalls.

At the top, I was pleased and quite touched to find that a farmer had set-up a little walker’s tuck-shop (open every afternoon) in a locker at the end of their drive.

Everything costs either 50p or one pound and there’s even a pad and pens where you can jot down requests.

Having bought a can of Fanta (which was still pretty cold, despite it being a warm day) and a CoCo pops bar, I continued on my way, but not before I paused to admire the view looking back towards Calderdale.

Continuing up the road, carry on heading straight. Soon after the tuck shop farm the tarmac ends replaced by gravel and scree – though the surface is still quite easy to walk on

Presently there is a gate with a sign behind it welcoming you to the “Walshaw & Lancashire Moor”. This appears to be a shooting estate.

Having passed through the gate keep walking along the track style road as it heads across the undulating moorland.

As you walk this section keep on the main track as opposed to going off towards any of the handful of farms which are scattered – mostly on the left hand side of the track – up on top of the moor.

Presently you pass over the highest point of the hills, Calderdale vanishes behind you.

And ahead of you stretches the western portion of the City of Bradford Council area. The land ahead is comparatively flat, but rises in the distance into the more northerly peaks of the Yorkshire Dales. Before you is the large village of Oxenhope, then behind that to your left sits Haworth, your final destination. In the very distance is the large town of Keighley sprawling along a valley.

As you descend, remain on the track you have been following.

It is quite churned up here, because having crossed the moorland and the shooting estate, this area is owned and managed by Yorkshire water, who keep the small Leeshaw Reservoir which lies at the base of the hill.

Pick your way down the rocky, churned up road, and presently you pass a house at the bottom just before the reservoir.

At the bottom by the reservoir turn right and head for the road that curves up the hill along the top of the dam.

Turn left onto the road and follow the dam a short way.

Turn left onto the road and follow the dam a short way. Presently there is a footpath sign pointing left.

Follow this down a steep bank in front of the dam, and then walk along the bank of a small river.

After a short way following the river this leads out onto another road near a former industrial building, with a prominent chimney which is where you come out onto a road.

Turn right, and walk a short way along this road until you come to a t-junction.

At this point turn left and walk a short way up the hill towards a terrace of houses.

Just behind the terrace of houses there is a crossroad.

Turn right at the crossroads and walk along the road. Handily Haworth is now signposted.

Keep on this road called Marsh Lane for over a mile.

It takes you through a series of little villages which are on the edge of the small town of Haworth. They mostly consist of former worker’s cottages which are now affluently done-up and inhabited by commuters to Leed and Manchester, homeworkers, or retirees with money.

Eventually you round a bend and start heading down a gently sloping hill into Haworth.

After a short walk along the main road into the village you come to the oldest part, including an essentially pedestrianised road which leads up to the church, former church school and parsonage which are most associated with the Brontes.

This part of the town has a good range of places to get food and drink, as well as some shops to browse. There’s also the preserved steam Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, which has it’s penultimate southern stop in Haworth.

Getting Back

Having had a late lunch and a bit of a wander around, I walked back to the town’s Baptist Chapel, to wait for the “Bronte Bus” (aka B3) back to Hebden Bridge. They’re roughly hourly, though according to an old man who stopped his car to speak to me, “they’re always late due to the traffic lights on Halifax Road”.

Needless to say, I was in no hurry, and enjoyed the short, half hour, bus ride back to Hebden Bridge over the dramatic moors.

Once back in Calderdale the bus terminates at Hebden Bridge Station for trains to Leeds, Manchester and beyond. It also stops on the edge of the town centre allowing onwards connections elsewhere by bus. Haworth itself is also well served by buses towards Keighley, Bradford and Halifax.