There is no better place to begin a walk in Brontë country than at Haworth Parsonage, the home of the Brontë family for more than 40 years. A purist might wish to struggle up the cobbled Main Street, but I prefer to save my breath for the moors.

The parsonage stands at the top of the hill behind the church, its stolid exterior betraying no hint that it was a powerhouse of extraordinary creativity.

It was here that, as young children, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne conjured up the exotic imaginary worlds of Glasstown, Angria and Gondal, which were to become a consuming passion well into their adult lives and lead to the creation of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

A visit to the parsonage, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, is essential to set the scene for our walk. There is such a contrast between the handmade books, no bigger than a credit card, written in script so tiny that they are almost indecipherable and the imaginative power of the stories that they contain.

There is a similar and equally symbolic contrast between the cramped parsonage and the wide open spaces of the moors, which were the inspiration and setting for the Brontës’ novels and poetry.

To follow in the footsteps of the Brontës, take the footpath from the parsonage, past the last remnants of the village and the old stone-pits and quarries, which Mrs Gaskell describes in her Life of Charlotte Brontë. You are heading high on the hillside, in the words of Emily’s poem: For the moors, For the moors, where the short grass like velvet beneath us should lie!

The great vista of open moorland broods on the horizon but the lower reaches of the hills are green: a testament to the tenacity of generations of Yorkshire farmers who have carved their fields out of a hostile environment and even today battle against the encroaching bracken and heather of the moor.

The land is too poor to support crops, so the fields are small, bounded by drystone walls and provide only pasture for sheep. The scattered farmhouses hunker into the hillsides, as if sheltering from the constant “wuthering” of the wind.

In the valley bottoms you occasionally glimpse a tall chimney and a square-built mill, sometimes with a row of cottages, all relics of the industrial revolution that transformed this corner of the West Riding and inspired Charlotte’s novel Shirley.

As early as 1850, Charlotte had observed that “various folks are beginning to come boring to Haworth, on the wise errand of seeing the scenery described in Jane Eyre and Shirley”. Today most visitors come with the landscape of Emily’s Wuthering Heights in mind. They won’t be disappointed, unless their impressions have been drawn from the films, rather than the books.

The real Brontë moors are as harsh and uncompromising as millstone grit. This is a landscape in thrall to the elements. The sinuous hills are riven with steep-sided valleys and, here and there, amid the heath and bracken, a landslip has gouged out a bare hollow or a black mass of rock rears on an exposed ridge. Clinging to the hills are a few scattered trees. There are no hedgerows, only grey drystone walls.

Apart from a few weeks in autumn, when the moors become a sea of purple, heavy with the scent of heather, the landscape is a variety of greens, browns and greys that change with the season and weather.

The silence is broken only by the plaintive cry of sheep, the liquid warbling of curlew and the lyrical crescendos of lark-song. The one discordant element is the wind turbines, an affront to the eyes and an insult to the intelligence.

There are well-worn paths to the official tourist sites. All have questionable Brontë associations but that is irrelevant. “In the hill-country silence,” Charlotte wrote after her sisters had died, “their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind”.

We can share that experience and begin to understand the genesis of some of the greatest novels in the English language.

The Brontes: A life in Letters, by Juliet Barker, published by The Overlook Press

In search of Heathcliff’s lair

Out on the moor, following the path to the Brontë Falls, it’s easy to see the source of the power and the inspiration for Emily’s brutal battering-ram of a fable, Wuthering Heights. From the rim of the moor beyond the falls juts the ruined farmhouse of Top Withins, a hard, black angle of walls under a pair of skeletal trees.

Whether Emily modelled her fortress-like novel on Top Withins is open to question. But the isolated farmhouse under the edge of the moor was well known to her and, in its harshly beautiful setting, commanding a vast panorama of moorland, it makes by far the best candidate for Heathcliff’s lair.

Down in the valley, on a bank overlooking Ponden Reservoir, stands Ponden Hall, a Pennine farmhouse, long and low among its shelter trees. This was Emily’s Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family so sadistically and remorselessly destroyed by Heathcliff and his lover and foster-sister Catherine.

It was also the setting for one of Emily’s lighter scenes, with Cathy and Heathcliff as naughty children, terrifying Edgar and Isabella Linton by making faces at them through the window — a chink of light and laughter in the dark stormy sky of Emily Brontë’s extraordinary imagination.

Pubs The Wuthering Heights Inn at Stanbury for a pint and a sandwich; great views from beer garden. Dogs welcome
(www.thewutheringheights.co.uk ; 01535 643332).

Route (OS Explorer OL21): From Brontë Parsonage, path (Public Footpath to Haworth Moor) to West Lane (025372). Left; in 50m, left up Cemetery Road for three quarters of a mile to T-junction. Marked track (016365 — Brontë Waterfalls) for one and a half miles to Brontë Bridge, Chair and Falls (999358). Cross bridge (Top Withins’ fingerpost); climb to fingerpost on skyline; left (Top Withins) on well-marked path for three quarters of a mile to Pennine Way (PW); left to Top Withins (981354).

Return down Pennine Way; follow it for two and a quarter miles via Upper and Lower Heights, Buckley Green and Ponden Reservoir to Ponden Hall (991371 — on right of road opposite Ponden House, just after bend). Return along reservoir road. At dam, follow Ponden Mill, Stanbury fingerpost past Ponden Mill (999372) to road. Right (take care!) for half a mile into Stanbury. At far end, right (013372) down Oxenhope road; cross Lower Laithe Reservoir dam. Left (016368 — Bridleway to Cemetery Road); follow right-hand track to Cemetery Road; return to Parsonage Museum.

County West Yorkshire.

Distance 14.5 km (9 miles).

Typical time four hours.

Starting point Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth (OS ref SE 029372).

What to see Brontë Parsonage Museum (www.bronte.org.uk 01535 642323); Brontë Falls; Top Withins farm ruins (Wuthering Heights); Ponden Hall (Thrushcross Grange — please note: this is a private house).

What to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Penguin Popular Classics).
Christopher Somerville

The Times Walks have proved a huge hit and here are two more you can join:
Windsor Great Park, July 4. Derwent May leads the way.
Aldeburgh, July 18. Richard Morrison walks and talks about Benjamin Britten.

Go to: www.offersinthetimes.com/timeswalks