Scenic Place in West Yorkshire

Ilkley Moor above the spa town of Ilkley in West Yorkshire is one of the most famous open moors in England, immortalised in the song On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at which has become the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire, a heather and gritstone moorland of Rombalds Moor rising above the Wharfe Valley that provides excellent walking in the characteristic Dark Peak upland tradition with extensive views of Wharfedale and the surrounding hills. The combination of the moorland walking, the Bronze Age rock carvings, the Victorian spa town below and the views create one of the most rewarding urban fringe moorland destinations in northern England. The Bronze Age cup and ring carvings of the Cow and Calf Rocks and the surrounding moorland at Ilkley represent one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric rock art in northern England, the carved spirals, cups and rings on the gritstone outcrops providing evidence of the ritual landscape that covered this moorland in the second millennium BC. The Twelve Apostles stone circle and various other prehistoric features add to the archaeological interest of the moor. The Victorian spa town of Ilkley below the moor provides excellent cafes, restaurants and visitor facilities that make it an ideal base for moorland walking, and the combination of the spa town character and the wild moor immediately above creates one of the most complete experiences of the contrast between Victorian English tourism culture and the wild Pennine landscape that surrounded and inspired it.

Hebden Bridge in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire is one of the most culturally vibrant and most individually characterful small towns in northern England, a former mill town revived since the 1970s by an influx of artists, writers and alternative communities who have created a town of unusual creative energy in the dramatic landscape of the gritstone Pennine valleys. The combination of the Victorian mill town architecture, the creative and independent business culture, the excellent independent shops and restaurants and the beautiful walking available on the surrounding moorland and in Hardcastle Crags creates one of the most rewarding small town experiences in Yorkshire. The town grew in the nineteenth century as a centre of the textile industry, its position at the confluence of several Calder Valley tributaries providing the water power and the transport links needed for the woollen mills that filled the valley floor. The decline of the textile industry left the town economically depressed but architecturally intact, the survival of the Victorian mill buildings and terrace housing providing the physical framework for the subsequent creative regeneration. The literary heritage of the area is considerable, Ted Hughes having been born at Mytholmroyd immediately below Hebden Bridge and Sylvia Plath having been buried in Heptonstall churchyard above. The walking from Hebden Bridge through Hardcastle Crags to Haworth across the moor provides one of the most culturally rich walking routes in northern England, traversing the landscape of two of the most celebrated literary associations in Yorkshire.

Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge in the South Pennines is a wooded valley of exceptional beauty managed by the National Trust, a deep gill in the gritstone moorland above the Calder Valley whose combination of the ancient sessile oak woodland, the tumbling stream, the Victorian mill buildings and the moorland landscape above creates one of the most atmospheric and most rewarding walking destinations in West Yorkshire. The valley is locally known as Little Switzerland for the alpine quality of its wooded valley scenery, a comparison that flatters Yorkshire but captures something of the dramatic contained character of this gritstone gorge. The National Trust woodland of Hardcastle Crags is one of the finest examples of ancient sessile oak woodland in the South Pennines, the damp, sheltered conditions of the gill providing the Atlantic oceanic woodland habitat that supports a rich community of mosses, liverworts, ferns and the characteristic woodland flowers of ancient broadleaved woodland. The wood anemones and bluebells of spring and the rich colours of the autumn beech provide the finest seasonal displays. The combination of Hardcastle Crags with the literary heritage of Hebden Bridge below, whose association with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and the contemporary creative community that has made it one of the most culturally vibrant small towns in Yorkshire, provides an excellent framework for a day in the Calder Valley that combines natural beauty with cultural richness.

Haworth in the West Yorkshire Pennines is the home of the Brontë family, the village where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë lived at the parsonage with their father Patrick throughout most of their adult lives and wrote the novels that have made them the most celebrated literary sisters in English literature. The Brontë Parsonage Museum, the village and the moorland above provide one of the most completely realised literary pilgrimage experiences available in Britain, the combination of the preserved domestic space where the novels were written and the Pennine moorland that inspired them creating an encounter with literary heritage of exceptional power. The parsonage, now managed by the Brontë Society as a museum, has been preserved with extraordinary care in the condition of the Brontë period, the furniture, domestic objects and personal belongings of the family creating an intimate and immediate connection to the domestic life of the three sisters. The small dining room where the sisters read and discussed their work in the evenings, the study where Patrick Brontë wrote and the bedrooms where illness eventually claimed all three daughters provide the physical context for one of the most creative family environments in the history of English literature. The moorland above Haworth, the landscape of Wuthering Heights and the freedom that the sisters found in the open country beyond their domestic confinement, is accessible within minutes of the parsonage and the walk across the moor to the ruined Top Withins farmhouse traditionally associated with the Earnshaw's farm provides one of the most charged literary heritage walks in England.