There's just too much to say about our whirlwind two-day tour of Bronte country and the seacoast town of Whitby. Improbably brilliant colors under changeable grey skies; every humble dooryard exploding with flowers; wide expanses of wild country in grays, greens and purples.
Walking through the village of Haworth was a lesson in floriculture.
I actually had to feel the petals sometimes to believe the flowers were real.
These are the front gardens of modest row houses, designed, planted and maintained not by professionals but by ordinary people.
Walking past garden after garden gave me a palpable sense of how deeply this art form is sunk into English culture. It is an art that many practice with a high degree of skill, and most know at least enough about to enjoy.
It's hard to come up with a North American equivalent...would it be cooking? Swimming? I don't know.
But we could not linger long at dooryards, however beautiful. Our destination was sublimity. We wanted to dare the cliche and walk the moors in the footsteps of the Brontes.
And we were not disappointed. This was another Sam-Baker's-Ordnance-Survey adventure, and we had a glorious time getting lost and then finding ourselves again under skies that alternately smiled and threatened, but were always spectacular.
The landscape contains a wide variety of ground cover and flowers,
always in the same subdued and lovely palette.
Walking back into town after an exhilarating four hours, we visited the Bronte Parsonage Museum and its garden.
At the Parsonage as in the neighboring churchyard where the Brontes are buried, the colors of the flowers against the grey stone walls and endless rows of tombstones seems to add to the melancholy atmosphere rather than cheer things up.
Especially after seeing the dark, expressive portraits and tiny personal effects of the family in the museum, the place felt spooky. Sublime, rather than beautiful.
This mood continued when we arrived at Whitby the next morning and jumped off the bus to gales of wind and temperatures worthy of a Texas winter. A ruined abbey dominates the sea-cliff, surrounded by another enormous graveyard where key scenes in Bram Stoker's Dracula are set. But facing the ocean is also a cheerful crescent of Georgian townhouses worthy of Bath, fronted by--of course--a lovely garden.
These pictures are breathtaking, Lisa! I now have a new travel goal. I also love your idea of swimming as the North American art form--sounds fantastic to me!
Posted by: Layne | 07/27/2011 at 07:32 AM
Thanks Layne. Swimming works as something that a lot of people enjoy without necessarily being professionals or experts....but is it art? I think we need a longer list of possibilities....
Posted by: Lisa Moore | 07/27/2011 at 07:48 AM
Love this post too! I would like to nominate quilting, but I might be a bit biased. Just a bit.
Posted by: Molly hardy | 07/27/2011 at 09:22 AM
Oh Molly. If only we all knew how to quilt.
Posted by: Lisa Moore | 07/27/2011 at 03:31 PM