From the Lake District, not from York
Brontë Country in a Day —
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, made real
Every stop is theirs, and the Parsonage ticket is in the price
From the Lake District, not from York
Every stop is theirs, and the Parsonage ticket is in the price
Duration
Full dayfrom 9am, back about 6.30pm
Parsonage
Insideentry included
Group
Max 6with a guide and a driver
Counties
3Cumbria · Lancashire · Yorkshire
Pickup
2 stationsWindermere · Oxenholme
Lunch
Haworthtables booked for you
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google
£179per person, all included
Check availability & book Choose your date · small groups onlyOften sells out. We don't run every tour every day, and with six seats a date can go quickly — book early for the date you want.
You know these books. Perhaps you have loved them since you were fourteen. Now you are standing in the small, plain room where they were written, and outside the window is what she saw every day of her life. Nobody has to explain anything.
On this tour your guide isn't at the wheel — a separate driver takes the road.
Three counties and the Pennine moors. Your driver watches the road, so you can watch the country the novels came out of.
Experienced, qualified drivers who know the moor roads in every kind of weather.
With a driver at the wheel, your guide can tell the story the whole way, and turn round to answer your questions.
Days from York fill the hours with mills, abbeys and market towns and give Haworth an hour or two. Ours comes in from the west, through the Brontës' own country, and every stop is theirs.
The house that became Ferndean. The school that became Lowood. The farmhouse across the valley that became Thrushcross Grange. You will know which is which by the end of the day.
Someone who has lived with these novels for years, tells the story where it happened, and knows which parts to keep back until you are standing in exactly the right place.
A separate driver takes the road, so the story never stops for a junction, and six of you at most means everyone hears it, and everyone gets to ask.
Tables booked at the Old Post Office on Main Street — the building from which Charlotte posted her novel to London. When it is closed, we book elsewhere in the village.
Entry to the Brontë Parsonage Museum is included and booked ahead by us. The only thing you pay for on the day is your lunch.
Every stop on this day is theirs — the school, the hall, the moors, the house, the graves. Not a mill, not an abbey, not a spa town on the way.Why the Lake District is the better way in
We collect from two railway stations at set times, and drop you back at the same station. Pickup times are fixed, so check them against your train before you book.
Windermere Railway Station
Outside the railway station, Windermere LA23 1AH
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back around
Oxenholme Railway Station
Station Yard, on the southbound side of the station, Oxenholme, Kendal LA9 7HF
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back around
Maps and directions for each pickup point
Tap a place to see it. The route can change with the weather and the roads on the day.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
The day runs the way the weather and the road suggest, so the places don't always come in this order.
01
Wycoller Hall
Ferndean, roofless
02
Pendle Hill
A darker story
03
The moors
A taste of the setting
04
The valley
Thrushcross Grange
05
Haworth
The village on foot
06
The Parsonage
Inside — entry included
07
The churchyard
The key to the novels
08
The church
Where the family are
First the building that was the Clergy Daughters' School, where four of the Brontë sisters were sent in 1824 — and which Charlotte, who never forgave it, turned into Lowood. Then Pendle Hill on the horizon, with a darker story of its own. Both told where they happened.
First a stop at the Atom, the sculpture on the hillside above, to look down the valley. Then a flat track beside a stream into a hidden Lancashire valley, and there it is: Wycoller Hall, roofless and overgrown, the house Charlotte turned into Ferndean Manor for the last chapters of Jane Eyre. The ending of the novel, in front of you.
Across the moors into Yorkshire, and a stop above the valley the sisters walked down, with the house that became Thrushcross Grange across it. Your guide tells the story Emily built Wuthering Heights around, while it is in view.
Into the church where their father preached for forty years, and out among the graves the family looked at from every window of their home. After that, the novels read differently. Everyone says so.
Inside the house where the novels were written, entry included and booked ahead — the rooms small and plain and full of their things, the windows looking where they looked. You leave through the bookshop, and the village is waiting.
Lunch at the Old Post Office, where the manuscripts left for London, and usually half an hour at the end to wander down the cobbles — with the minibus waiting at the bottom, so nobody walks back up. Then the road back to the Lakes, with the light going.
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google, where you can read every review, unedited.
★★★★★"I have read Wuthering Heights four times. I thought I knew it well. Standing at Wycoller Hall, and then looking across that valley while our guide told us the story behind it, I understood the novel in a completely different way. An extraordinary day."
Susan M. · London
★★★★★"The Old Post Office lunch was the detail that made it for me. Sitting in the building where Charlotte posted her manuscripts to London, with people who felt the same way about it. We talked about Jane Eyre for an hour."
Caroline & James T. · Edinburgh
★★★★★"The churchyard was devastating in the best possible way. Once you understand what it meant to live beside it, the novels stop being Gothic atmosphere and become something much closer to home."
Helen W. · Oxford
The same day, run privately: your own guide, driver and minibus, collected from your hotel in Windermere — or from Bowness, Ambleside, Kendal or Oxenholme by arrangement — on the date that suits you, with nobody in the minibus you didn't bring. Well-behaved dogs, and children under seven, by arrangement.
With six of you, a private day costs less per person than the scheduled tour.
£942 per group up to 6 guests · full day
Enquire about a private Brontë dayThis tour can be added to, or adapted as part of, a bespoke tour — tailor-made for each individual booking, around the places and the people you most want to see.
Find out about bespoke toursWe run this tour all year, and Brontë Country has a weather of its own in every season. Bring suitable clothing, whatever the month — the weather is part of the point.
Lambs in the Wycoller fields, the stream loud beside the track, and the moors greening slowly from the valleys upward. Haworth's cobbles before the summer crowds.
The heather comes into flower in August and the moors turn purple to the horizon. Long light for the road back to the Lakes. Still bring a coat. It is the Pennines.
Bracken gone bronze on the moor, leaves down in the churchyard, mist in the Wycoller valley. October on the Pennine moors is the season the books were written for.
Cold, wet and windy, more often than not — and that is Wuthering Heights. The churchyard bare, the village quiet. The weather adds to the drama, and winter guests say so.
Every tour is led by one of a small team of local guides — Tim, Gillian, Sandra and Steve — who know the books and the road. The team rotates, so we can't promise a particular guide. On this tour a separate driver takes the wheel. We are based in Kendal, our minibuses are licensed for private hire, and we are fully insured.
This page was checked by Phil in .
Photographs: habiloid (CC BY-SA 2.0), DeFacto (CC BY-SA 4.0), Marathon (CC BY-SA 2.0), Tim Green from Bradford (CC BY 2.0), John H Darch (CC BY-SA 2.0), Poliphilo (CC0), Steve Daniels (CC BY-SA 2.0), Dominic Nelson (CC BY-SA 4.0), John H Darch (CC BY-SA 2.0), Steven Haslington (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Placeholder photography — to be replaced with our own.
