Bronte-Land

Something that I still can't get over is how close together all the places are here. It's like you have been shrunken down and are living in one of those miniature villages that people with an excessive amount of time create - if I were to look up and see an enormous, delighted toddler looking down on me, I wouldn't be surprised. Terrified, but not surprised. Obviously it would be more logical to assume that I have been miniaturised than accept that things are just different here.

That is a preamble to explaining my joy in realising that Yorkshire is only an hour or two away from Newcastle, and hence, I was able to visit the home of the Brontes, who, you will recollect, lived in a parsonage in a Yorkshire village. It is a beautiful town, all grey stone buildings and narrow cobbled streets. The house itself was no doubt very nice for the time, but tiny in comparison to what our minimum requirements would be - it has 3.5 bedrooms and the Brontes were a family with six children. All of whom their father outlived. It is furnished largely with the Brontes original possessions, which The Bronte Society has been collecting since 1897, bless them. It's hard to believe that the amount of writing that the three sisters produced all came out of one tiny living room. And for any of you that may be wondering why their brother Bramwell never made a success of being an artist, there is ample evidence on the walls: he was attempting to be an artist despite bypassing learning how to paint, or having any discernible talant. No wonder the pub down the road was the main beneficiary of his munificence.

After that we drove back through the Yorkshire Dales, it was a beautiful sunny day so I missed the experience of Wuthering about on them, but I don't think that is something that I will miss too much... it is a stunningly unique landscape.

The following day I went down to York, and got to gawp at the amazing York Minster: remarkable both for having the largest Medieval stained glass window in England, beautiful architecture and fascinating history, AND because it means you get to say 'Minster' a lot, and Minster is a fun word to say. One of the funnest that the English language is furnished with, I'm sure you'll agree. Then wandered around the narrow cobbled streets in the centre of York, the buildings overhang the streets so that they almost meet in the centre, once all of York was like this. We went to Jorvik, the museum of the Viking settlement of York, which was fascinating, despite being aimed at people 15 years younger than me.