13 May post by Kylie

Wednesday featured the longest hike of the entire trip – a 17-mile trek along the Pennine Way, fraught with sheep, cows, blisters, bruises, wild heather-filled British moors, and a plentiful amount of farm animal poop. The day began, predictably enough, with the hostel group getting hopelessly lost, but after a 30-minute detour, Matt’s map-reading skills got us back on the right path to meet up with the well-fed and well-pleased hotel group. We then began the big one, the one we’d all been waiting for – namely, the 17-mile walk to Haworth, which absolutely had to be completed by 3:30 sharp. In spite of various injuries and ailments, we made pretty good time and were ridiculously pleased with the sunlight and decided lack of rain. The lush, green, and well-fertilized British countryside came to an abrupt end when we reached the moors. Everything was brown, bleak, and bare, and a mere handful of sheep shuffled through the heather while we struggled into the wind along the cut stone pathway. The group’s reactions to the moors were varied; a few described them as harsh yet romantic, while others described the walk as “the worst hour of my life” (Katy A) and the landscape as the obvious place to lose one’s sanity and soul. When we finally descended into town, we encountered a hug hog, whose intentions may or may not have been misjudged by the fearless leader who kicked him soundly, some baby chicks, and some frolicking lambs before continuing our uphill climb to Haworth. Although we were disgruntled, tired, and mind-numbingly sore, we arrived in time for a tour of the Bronte home (the Haworth parish), and even got there early enough for some famished members of the group to splurge on the overpriced gift shop chocolate. The Bronte tour was fascinating and morbid (also, fascinatingly morbid), especially our tour of the graveyard, where an estimated 42,000 people have been buried on a tiny plot of land since the 1600s. We learned that Haworth’s health conditions at the time of the Bronte’s were horrible – only 50% of children survived past age six, and the average life expectancy was in the mid-twenties – likely because the thousands of bodies sandwiched into the graveyard didn’t decompose properly and contaminated the already industrial and polluted city’s water supply. It was easy to see where the Bronte’s got their inspiration, especially as the day became increasingly overcast and the landscape got gloomier and gloomier. We finally meandered from the parish museum past Butt Lane and a garden stuffed and bursting with lawn gnomes to our youth hostel, a huge house from the 1870s complete with its own ballroom. After homemade Indian food, apple pies, emotional breakdowns (hint: mine) at our nightly debriefing, a stretching and massage class led by the lithe and limber Roxanne, trips to the blessedly hot showers and several mysterious apparitions of blue bed-sheet-clad ghosts, we hobbled into bed, having overcome yet another (this time figurative) mountain of our British landscape tour.