I was ever-so-filled with anticipation/dread/excitement/fear to hike the Bronte's Moors for the following reasons:
- I love Jane Eyre with all my heart, and am warming up to Wuthering Heights.
- Our hostel put me in a thoroughly Bronte mood. We played a great game of sardines, and we're fairly certain the place was haunted.
- With a malicious giggle, our tour guide at the Bronte Parsonage Museum told us that people die while hiking upon the Moors. They don't dress warmly enough or fall into ravines or other unimaginable horrors.
- The cemetery outside the parsonage creeped me out beyond words' ability to explain, so leaving was at the top of my list.
- The Brontes walked on the Moors daily, just for kicks and giggles.
- The weather was TERRIBLE. Freezing wind, rain, hail, and the like.
- I had been whisper-yelling "Heathcliff!" on most of the hikes, so now I was ready for my grand performance.
- It's The Moors!
Really this hike was amazing. The landscape (all that brownish-purple heather) was unlike anything we had seen in England, or would ever see in any other spot of England. It's wildness was quite enchanting . . . but that was only the beginning. We visited Top Withens--the ruins of a house that many believe inspired Wuthering Heights--which was great, and then things took a turn for the worse.
Mile followed mile of black sludge and pools of ankle-deep (sometimes knee-deep) water, and one by one we began to go mad. Perhaps you think I am being dramatic purely for the Moors sake, but I am not. Everything felt dreary, desolate, and dead, and I really did wonder if I would make it back alive. All the mud, all the falling over rocks, all the massacred animals were too much to handle. My knee--which never gave me problems before England--began to give out, so physically and mentally, there was no going on. Several of us were picked up and driven to our next hostel, while the others forged on through the cold and dark (such bravery!). I admit that I cried while on the hike and after the hike, and I felt as though I would never be happy again. For some reason that hike was traumatizing.
However, if I had to hike the Moors again, for some odd reason, I think I would gladly do so.
-KB
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