GOOD moorland paths lead to a famous literary shrine.

Start from Penistone Hill Country Park, the car park on Oxenhope-Stanbury road at Tom Stell’s Seat.

Penistone Hill’s quarries are now put to use as car parks, offering fine views over the Worth Valley.

Rejoin unfenced Moor Side Lane on the north side of the brow, noting that on the brow itself, just up to the left, is Tom Stell's Seat, a gritstone block inscribed with the name of a local rambler.

Crossing straight over the road, a path runs to a kissing-gate in a fence and heads away across Haworth Moor, with immediate views over the valley to Stanbury.

The improving path enjoys a grand stroll across the moor, slowly merging into a broad wallside track.

Continue along this past a ruin, narrowing into a broad path as the moor opens out.

The isolated farm of Harbour Lodge is seen ahead beneath the Top Withins skyline, attendant trees aiding identification as it just breaks the horizon.

The rougher path drops down to the attractive Bronte Bridge in the colourful side valley of South Dean Beck. By the path just before it is the seat-shaped stone known as the Bronte Chair.

Across the bridge take the path slanting up to the left. Meeting another path as it levels out, turn left to enjoy a sustained level stroll parallel with the beck below.

A solid wall leads to a spell along the bottom of a grassy pasture, but at the end you are firmly onto open moor.

The splendid path rolls on, later curving right to stepping-stones on a sidestream then commencing a part-flagged climb towards Top Withins.

Meeting the flagged Pennine Way at a lesser ruin, rise left for two minutes to the famous remains of Top Withins, regarded as the Earnshaw home in Emily Bronte's classic novel Wuthering Heights.

Whether or not Emily actually visualised Heathcliff here, one can imagine her story being enacted in this bleak moorland setting. Big views look over Bronteland to Rombalds Moor beyond the Aire Valley.

Retrace steps to Bronte Bridge, across which take a rougher path climbing steeply up the right bank of the sidestream boasting the ‘Bronte Waterfall’, a slender trickle no different from a thousand other Pennine streams.

This rough climb quickly levels out and the path runs on towards Harbour Lodge. Passing grouse butts, a small footbridge precedes joining the unsurfaced access road.

Turn left away from the farm, and on for some time until beyond an appreciable kink. As the road levels and straightens, a waymark sends a thin but clear and more inviting path off to the right.

This angles gently down, with a brief moist spell in the middle (Leeshaw Reservoir is ahead, below) before improving and reaching a wall along the moor edge.

A good path is joined to run left: after a gentle rise Penistone Hill re-appears, and Drop Farm’s drive is joined to lead out to the road just down from the start.