Wayfinder 12: Common
Wayfinder 12: Louisa’s bench
Walking directions: From the intersection at Wayfinder 11, you can take the broad path that curves to the right if you wish (especially if it’s muddy), but I recommend the narrower path that drops down into a sheltered hollow, with the cemetery wall to your left. This is a butterfly hot spot in summer. Where the path forks and the wall corners left, keep right to walk through the trees until you reach a shortcut through a clearing on the left. Follow this to an intersection, then turn left again to head down the hill toward Cemetery Road. Pause at Louisa’s bench under the hollybush for your final trail stop.
To complete the walk: Head down to Cemetery Road past the fingerpost that says ‘Public Path, Urban Common’. Cross the road, bearing diagonally left to the car park. Take the narrow footpath on your right that runs parallel to the road. When you reach the end of the footpath, cross Cemetery Road but stay on this side of West Lane, walking a short distance on a footpath that appears on the right to reach a narrow stile into a field. Go through this stile and follow the stone footpath that leads across the field and through a gate, past Heathcliff terraces. The path will bring you out at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where you can continue your adventures, or head back past the Old School Room and onto Haworth Main Street for a well-earned cuppa.
About this Wayfinder
In the final Wayfinder, we bid farewell to the moor and the walker — but not for long. The wonderful thing about Penistone Hill and all of the sites that make up the Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve is that they’re not remote. They’re right on the doorstep of urban Bradford’s satellite towns and villages; bogs and moors and woods and wildflower meadows side-by-side with old mills, railway, and busy lives.
We’re so lucky to have them, and they’re waiting for us whenever we make time. I don’t drive, but I get to Haworth easily enough by train and bus. From where I live in Shipley, I have a favourite spot up near Baildon Moor that I can walk to in under an hour. We call it Lapwing Lane and Curlew Corner for how many of them we see in the spring. These birds are rare and vanishing, but we have the right habitat for them here. What a privilege and responsibility.
Penistone Hill is an urban common, which means we all have access to it — everyone is welcome. This Wayfinder is an invitation to treasure our time in nature, to let it work its magic on us, and to protect it in return.
Heather and bilberries on Penistone Hill
