Travel day today, heading to York, so we had to put our luggage out by 7:15. Actually, I was rather glad to be leaving this hotel–our room was not air conditioned and I had trouble sleeping because of the heat. Another problem with the hotel was the unpleasant smell of manure used to muck the fields on two sides of the hotel. Our British friends didn’t seem to mind the aroma, but it was rough on our sensitive American noses.

The big news today in Britain is the No vote on the Scottish independence referendum. Many of the folks we met seemed relieved at the outcome. Even so, there was a large percentage of Scots voting for independence, and the referendum election will clearly have repercussions throughout the British Empire. Even though the election did not directly affect us, most of our group is probably happy with the result–I think we all would hate to see the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

After breakfast we headed out, east and north-east, entering Yorkshire county where we traveled through lovely countryside and several neat villages. We also began climbing in altitude and entered the moors, areas of poor soil that were cleared of trees in ancient times and now are mainly covered with thin grasses, thistle and heather.

Before lunch we reached the village of Haworth, home of the Brontes. About half the group went directly into the town while the rest took a short, mile and a half, walk on the moors. We stayed on the footpaths as we walked, and it is obvious that walking cross-country through the heather and grass would be very difficult. Our walk ended at the Penistone Moors Summit benchmark, where we had a group photo.

On the way into the village, we stopped at a half-buried set of stone books. Before telling us the name of the sculpture, which is “Literary Landscape”, Peter challenged us come up with a name. My two favorites were: Ed’s “Moor Books” and Jon’s “Fallen Leaves”.

We had a nice lunch at The White Lion in Haworth and then toured the Bronte Parsonage Museum, where the six children grew up and where Charlotte and Emily wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Sadly, all six of the Bronte children died before their father and the entire family, except for Ann, is buried in the family vault in the church. It is just amazing to me that such works of literary genius could have been created by two young women in this small country village.

We then journeyed on to York and checked into our ‘home away from home’ for the next three nights. Before dinner Peter gave us a nice lecture on Abbeys and Monasteries.