Breakfast was included this morning, so I took the opportunity to order a Full English Breakfast. It includes sausage, bacon, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, baked beans, and toast. It was all . . .fine like most English food. Palatable, but I’m not going to go out of my way to order it again. I put the beans on my toast to see what all this “beans on toast” fuss is all about. English people love this combo. It tastes exactly as you would expect — which is nothing to write home about. For all the things that Great Britain has stolen . . .er borrowed from other countries and cultures, you would think they could have brought back some good cuisine, but perhaps they figured they already had a slam dunk with beans on toast.
We ventured back on the road to continue driving north into Yorkshire. The sun was fully out today. Wowsers! It was about a 90 minute drive past Manchester and up to the town of Haworth, where the famous Brontë sisters resided. It is a small town with its main road climbing steeply up a hill and curving to the parsonage and school they used to attend. We were able to go inside a small church where many of them were buried — few making it past the age of 30. In fact, the nearby church graveyard had many tombstones that Nicole observed as having very early deaths. Some stated simply, “Not quite a year.” Perhaps the mortality rate was so bad that many people didn’t even bother keeping track of a birthday. “Won’t make it to one, they won’t. No be mindin’ the records, then.”
I later read that the church’s graveyard is so overcrowded with bodies that rainwater soaking through the site leaked over into the village’s water supply. Longterm exposure to bacteria weakens immune systems. The average lifespan for the village of Haworth was less than 26 years old with nearly half of of the population not making it out of infancy. Charlotte, who penned Jane Eyre, made it to the geriatric age of 38 only to die from morning sickness, an ailment that few doctors understood at the time. What a time to be alive! . . .albeit brief.
The town itself is quite cute if you look beyond the fact that it was a literal death trap for its 19th century residents. It has numerous quaint shops, pubs, and tea rooms. Nicole bought a decorative copy of Jane Eyre to display next to our Brita filter. #neverforget. In all seriousness, though, she will display it on one of our bookshelves to show that we are sophisticated. Jane Eyre is honestly the only one of the Brontë books that either of us enjoyed. We attempted to slog through Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and it was like watching a movie where you don’t like any of the characters and don’t care about their outcomes.
We hadn’t had lunch, so we decided to have a sort of tea service. We went to a place called Cafe Verde, where Nicole had some tea and a scone. I had a Victoria sponge, which they are often making in The Great British Bake-off show. It wasn’t too bad — better than most things that are British anyway.
We then decided to go for a stroll through the countryside. There was a public walkway that went between fields in the nearby hills that was quite scenic. Enroute there were some random stone sculptures in the shape of books that were coming out of the ground. Odd, but interesting nonetheless.
The trail could eventually lead to something called Brontë Waterfall, a generous term for what appeared to be a small cascade on google image search. Also present further down the trail was the Brontë stone chair. It is said that Charlotte used to sit there and weave stories, as there were no Starbucks back then. Clearly none of this is actually true. Charlotte probably never even made it to that stone bench. With such a low life expectancy, she wouldn’t have taken the time to walk all the way out there.
We decided not to walk to the stone chair or waterfall, but we did enjoy the nice landscapes of the area nonetheless. The weather wasn’t too bad. We were still wearing multiple layers, but the sun made it feel a little bit warmer than the other days. We wound our way back toward The Old Registry Hotel, where we are staying by passing through this narrow pathway beneath the trees.
We attempted to get dinner at the Haworth Steam Brewing Co., but they don’t serve food on Mondays evidently. With that option off the table, there was literally only one place in the village to get food at this hour — the Fleece Inn pub. All the usual selections were present. Having had fish-and-chips the previous two nights, I went with a steak-and-ale pie. We each had some darker ales including a local Timothy Taylor dark beer called “Ram Tam” to chase them down. A sticky toffee pudding was ordered to polish it all off.
We made our way back to the hotel to settle in for the night. Also worthy of note, is that the ceilings are low and the mirrors are all about one foot lower than they should be. And this doesn’t seem to be an accident. Along with bad drinking water, most residents of Haworth suffered from malnutrition which contributed to stunted growth. All the Brontes were said to be quite short with Charlotte clocking in at 4ft 10. This is further proof that she never would have made it out to that stone chair to contemplate story ideas. Her stride would have been far too short to get anywhere quickly.
Tomorrow we must get up early to drive down to Manchester to (hopefully) hop on a plane over to Copenhagen. With the strike at Heathrow still ongoing, it is virtually impossible to fly back to London, so Copenhagen it is. We could drive back, but that would take around six hours, which also isn’t appealing. We planned on doing this one-way rental regardless, and it would be nice if it all works out. British airports are notoriously bad across the board, and I suspect Manchester is about to test us.
passports & pepto bismol 