On a clear day, the trig point offers stunning views towards Top Withens, Walshaw Moor, and fellow Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve sites at Baildon, Harden, and Ilkley Moor. I wanted to write a Wayfinder that connects Penistone Hill to the larger Pennine upland landscape that it’s part of, and to celebrate its ecological importance. As the final stop on the Bradford Pennine Gateway NNR Trail that links every site in the nature reserve, the trig seemed the perfect place for this poem.

I feel instinctively defensive when I hear the moor described as ‘bleak’ or ‘barren’ or, as Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in her biography of Charlotte Brontë, as “the feeling of being pent up by some monotonous and illimitable barrier”. A healthy moor is one of nature’s miracles, and there’s beauty everywhere if you look close enough. I’m more inclined to Emily Brontë’s way of thinking, as recalled by Charlotte:

My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden.

All of the plants mentioned in this poem were found in a May 2026 survey of Penistone Hill by Bradford Botany Group, and many more besides — 134 in total.