We started off the day in Christ church Sowerby Bridge, meeting my friends at the weekly coffee morning. The font was used to baptise many generations of babies in our family, and the altar was the scene of many of my ancestors’ weddings. Then it was off to meet Jean and John from Sowerby who took us up to the hills above Elland to a farm shop that has a cafe with an amazing view. Then to walk off our lunch we had a stroll along the dam at Baitings reservoir near Ripponden. It was windy and raining but us Yorkshire folk are tough!

Settling in after a 22 hour journey

Sound of a brass band  next morning got us running out of the house to see what was a- happenin’. It was the Hebden Bridge brass band playing for the march to the cenotaph for the remembrance Sunday parade

Then the bus up to Heptonstall for my favourite views down into the valley. It was barely above freezing with a strong bitterly cold Northerly wind blasting in right from the Arctic. The buildings below look like  a tiny model village.

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The bells of the ‘new’ church were ringing for Remembrance Day

Anna paying a visit to her great, great, great, great, great grandparents , James and Mally Wrigley –  so fitting for Remembrance Sunday. 

And now I have each daughter photographed in front of the same pillar in Heptonstall old church.

We did a 7 mile hike to gibson Mill in Hardcastle Crags. Despite the freezing temperature the cafe inside was packed – we had a wait in line! Other, more braver souls, were picnicing on the outside tables. We remarked on the many, many young children out with their parents on this sunny Sunday afternoon.  

My mum used to visit this former mill which became a tourist destination in the early part of the last century. It even had a roller skating rink inside. Anna is playing dress-up. Behind her is the pulley system for lifting bales of wool – just like in the ceiling of my apartment’s kitchen.

Lovely autumn colours

Reaching Hebden Bridge

A well-earned drink  – open mic in the White Duck (sorry, White Swan!)

A trip down Memory Lane to see the concert hall that I used to attend in high school. It’s now a smart hotel but the Bar keeps the name Opus One which was the title of the series of concerts I attended. A nice coffee there and a friendly manager who needed little prompting to relate the story of the building’s conversion to the hotel made for a lovely hour in which to shelter from the cold north wind outside. The conductor of the Halle orchestra was Sir John Barbirolli and I went to say hello to him again after a hiatus of 44 years! Manchester’s Christmas market opened today and St Peter’s Square has been converted into a village of wooden chalets serving all manner of warming libations (check out the names of those beers!) and tempting foods. I found it too cold to eat outside – no wonder, it was cold enough for an ice rink! Talk about  a wolf in sheep’s clothing –  how about a sheep in woman’s clothing. Just love the British sense of humour.

Waking up to find the valley had been listening closely to Keats’s poem and had clothed itself in mist I decided on the spur of the moment to head up to Heptonstall and take photos of the inversion layer. I must have got there a little too late because the clouds in the valley were just disappearing as I arrived in the village. But still, the views were glorious. I headed along Northgate to one of my favourite viewpoints and found one man and his dog. I enquired if there was a path this way down to Hebden Bridge and he gave me directions. I’d been wanting to find a path other than the main road back back down to Hebden so here was my opportunity. The path was steep, very steep, very very steep as I headed down to Hebden Water and the bridleway to Hardcastle Crags. Sometimes the path was so steep that steps had been built so that people from the farms o’t tops could get to and from work in the mills in the valley bottoms. Wow, these people must have been hardy souls. As it was there were so many leaves on the steps it proved a difficult task and if it had been a little drier I would have been doing a ‘bottom slide’ in places. But there was too much mud for that!

Autumn colours in the park across from my apartment

On the road from Slack Bottom to Heptonstall

Silhouette

Looking across the valley of Hardcastle Crags to Old Town with its distinctive mill chimney

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Chris once told me that the thing he missed most having moved from Wales to the U.S was the sound of running water. This is Hebden Water

Allotments 

If you’d like to see a professional’s view of this area watch ‘To Walk Invisible, ‘the new made for TV movie about the life of the Brontes. The film company constructed an entire replica of the Parsonage where the family lived, building it up on Penistone Moor. I’d loved to have seen it but it was dismantled at the end of filming. It’s available on Youtube. The movie is written by Sally Wainwright who also wrote two of my favorite TV series set in this area – ‘Last Tango in Halifax’ (which used my old high school for the school scenes) and ‘Happy Valley’ which is filmed mostly in Hebden Bridge around the canal  and Heptonstall. Both are available on Netflix. She’s currently working on a life of Anne Lister, filming around Shibden Hall, Halifax.

What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? It’s a traditional West Yorkshire game in which you wear new white sneakers and then walk 4 miles along the Rochdale canal towpath after a heavy rainstorm. During this escapade I exchanged greetings with 33 humans, assorted canines, seven wild Canadian geese, two tame muscovy ducks and a lone male mallard who seemed eager to attract my attention (could it be because my phone’s  ringtone is set to Quacks?)

St Michael’s church, Mytholmroyd

All coincidences lead somewhere: A few weeks ago Hebden Bridge post office closed for 2 weeks for refurbishment, so I walked two miles to Mytholmroyd in order to post birthday cards. Someone had mentioned that Mytholmroyd church was worth taking a look at, so I tried the door, it opened and a lady showed me round. Turned out she is the vicar and she invited me to the church’s rededication ceremony on November 5th, following the devastating floods on Boxing Day, 2015. November 5th dawned sunny so it seemed a good idea to walk the two miles to the service. I arrived just as the bells stopped ringing, heralding the beginning of the service. I ran the gauntlet of TV crew and

TV crew

photographers in the South Porch and grabbed a pew near the front. I’d never seen so many people in a church apart from at a Christmas service.The Archbishop of York was resplendent in his mitre and robes and during the service the sun shone on the altar flowers and the gold leaf on the mosaics – beautiful. I sat reading the memorials to the

Altar  in its finest garb

fallen in both World Wars and thought of my granddad who had taken his own life on November 5th, 1933, probably because the sound of fireworks on bonfire night brought back to him the sounds of warfare in the Belgian trenches. It seemed highly fitting that I should be in church today.

This is the only time I’ve known an organist to bring his own organ!

After the service I went to talk to the organist. I knew that the organ had been ruined by the flood and that the church was using a small portative organ, but this sounded too rich for that little organ. It transpired that the organist had brought in this organ himself. I told him that I might be interested in lessons and we exchanged business cards. He is the director of the Halifax Organ Academy and teaches at his home in Mytholmroyd. As everyone filed out of the church I chatted to a lady who suddenly said, “I know you.” It was the landlady at the Crown Pub, right next to my apartment. I’d gone for a drink early

The Archbishop of York and the landlady of The Crown

one evening and the only other person in there was a guy who had been making the most revolting burping sounds. I expected at every minute that he would throw up. The landlady asked him quietly to leave, which he did – quietly, but he reappeared five minutes later with his heckles raised and a very aggressive attitude. The landlady looked to me for support and I’m glad I was there for her. . .  and all that happened because Hebden Bridge post office had been  closed!