Station to station: a walk in Brontë country

The first in our new series of car-free walks is an enjoyable tramp across the West Yorkshire moors from Haworth to Hebden Bridge

In 1861, civil engineer John McLandsborough paid a trip to Haworth, declaring himself a “pilgrim at the shrine of Charlotte Brontë”. The author had died six years earlier and people were curious to see where she and her sisters had been born, raised and so profoundly inspired. McLandsborough was astonished to find there was no railway line so, although he was a specialist in sewers and drains, he proposed a branch line connecting Haworth with the Midland Railway at Keighley. Six years later, a line was opened through the beautiful Worth Valley.

The line closed in 1961, just before Beeching slashed hundreds of local services, but thanks to the efforts of an army of volunteers, the Keighley & Worth Valley line still operates every weekend and on some weekdays in summer, connecting six rural stations in a little under five miles.