The Telegraph and Argus has an article on the campaign to fight the plans for a windfarm at the heart of Brontë country.
A scoping report is being considered to build a 65-turbine development on Walshaw Moor, between Stanbury and Hebden Bridge.
Opponents say the environmental and visual impact of the scheme would be massive.
And the Haworth-based Brontë Society fears the project would ruin the landscape for millions of people from across the world who visit to experience the surroundings that inspired the literary siblings and see ruined farmhouse Top Withens, reputedly the inspiration for the setting of Wuthering Heights.
Society director Rebecca Yorke says the organisation, which was consulted about the proposed Calderdale Wind Farm when the scoping report was first produced, is concerned about its planned scale and location.
She adds: "The location is environmentally sensitive and also we believe the development would have a significant and detrimental impact on an iconic local viewpoint and world-renowned landscape.
"To this day, people walk the moorland between Haworth and the Walshaw estate for reflection and inspiration and to understand the context and surroundings in which the Brontës wrote their poetry and world-famous novels.
"The visual impact that 65 turbines would have on the moorland around Top Withens and the area’s many public footpaths cannot be understated and we will be monitoring the situation closely." (Alistair Shand)
For those familiar with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this walk will remind them of the wild moors, lonely farms and deep valleys which characterise the book. For those unfamiliar it is an excellent walk on good paths with far reaching views.
Either park in Haworth (a car park near the Parsonage Museum, where the Brontë family lived) or better just drive the half mile to a minor road out the north end of the village. It shortens the walk and avoids some road walking.
Just beyond the cemetery, which is on your left, is some parking, leave the car and carry on westwards along the minor road towards the moors. After crossing a road follow a lane westwards with a dry stone wall on your right signposted to the Brontë Waterfall. Almost immediately you will notice the sandy element of the lane (soon becoming a track) which is a legacy of the hard sandstone bedrock.
The track continues for one mile before dropping gradually towards a small river bed and an idyllic picnic spot. Here is one of the favourite spots for the Brontë sisters to walk to. I can certainly picture them in this place and it is utterly inspiring.
On entering this little enclave there is a large stone, the Brontë seat, to the left and a few metres uphill is the Brontë waterfall (not large but beautifully tiered) and directly ahead is the Brontë Bridge. The bridge is not the original one but has been replaced sympathetically.
Cross the river via the bridge and head uphill to a stile and a number of footpath choices. Take the one to the left signposted Top Withins. All the signs here are dual language, rather bizarrely in Japanese. Apparently the Japanese learn English via the writings of the Brontë sisters and a pilgrimage here was extremely popular 25 years ago.
Follow the footpath heading steadily uphill for a further mile, turning left when it meets the Pennine Way and you will arrive at the derelict farmhouse of Top Withins (with its single stand out tree). The farmhouse is allegedly the inspiration for Wuthering Heights farm and on a cold winter’s day it is bleak enough to see why. (Jonathan Smith)
The Guardian reviews the reissue of the 1988 novel
Inland by Gerald Murnane.
Murnane is constantly thinking and seeing in idealities: things that exist only as creations of the imagination.
This crucially includes the books that he sees – their words, pages, spines and the superimposable images they invoke. Some of those pages are from Wuthering Heights: just as Cathy clutches Lockwood in his dream, so the older man is grasped by the memory of the “girl-woman” on the other side of the window. (Richard Robinson)
Violent storms often mark turning points in epic narratives. King Lear staggers across a windswept heath, bemoaning the loss of his kingdom and his mind. Battered by a hurricane in the Florida Everglades, Zora Neale Hurston’s characters shelter in their flimsy shanties; “they seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” Storms pummel the Yorkshire moors when a spurned Heathcliff runs from the house of his beloved in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. At the apex of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (a film that derives its structure in part from Benjamin Britten’s opera Noye’s Fludde) a great storm wreaks destruction on a village. (David A. Hoekema)
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