Visiting the Brontë sisters in Yorkshire

by Sean McLachlan on

People say literary genius is a rare thing, something seen only once in a thousand or a million people. Maybe so, but the Brontës had three (and maybe five) literary geniuses in the same family.

From their father’s parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, in northern England, the three Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne produced some of the most popular books in the English language. Works like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are still read more than 150 years after they were published. They’ve survived the test of time. The ebook edition of Wuthering Heights is currently ranked number 457 at Amazon’s Kindle store, and number 5 in the fiction classics category. Their work has been made into numerous movies and another version of Jane Eyre is coming out next year.

The sisters also prompted literary tourism to Haworth. It started not long after they died and has steadily grown ever since. While everyone comes to Haworth to see the Brontë home and related sights, they also enjoy a beautiful and well-preserved nineteenth century village full of shops and fine restaurants.

Now I have to be honest here and admit that until I went on this trip I had never read a Brontë novel. They were the classics I never got assigned in school and I figured I’d get around to whenever. Before I left for Yorkshire I read Jane Eyre and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The rich prose and sedate pacing definitely belong to the nineteenth century, but the smartass, independent female protagonist belongs to the modern world.

Much of Haworth remains as the Brontës knew it. The Brontë Parsonage Museum preserves their home and tells their story. House museums are tricky to do well. Despite being a museum junkie, some historic homes bore me to death. This one, however, gripped my attention. Besides the usual stuff like the desks they wrote at and the sofas they sat on (and Emily may have died on), there are the little details that make it stick in your memory. In the nursery where they spent their childhood faint pencil drawings can be seen on the wall. While it’s impossible to say if these literary giants doodled these when they were small, it makes you wonder.

There’s also the story of Branwell Brontë. Who? Yeah, that was always his problem. He was their brother, a failed artist and struggling writer living in the shadow of his superstar sisters. He fell into a downward spiral of alcoholism and opium addiction before dying at 31. The above painting of his sisters is Branwell’s work. He originally included himself in the portrait, then unsuccessfully erased himself. He doodled constantly, illustrating letters he sent to friends. One at the museum shows himself in two images. The first is labeled “Paradise” shows him drunk off his ass and shouting, “I am the lord of the manor!” The other is labeled “Purgatory” and shows him hunched over an opium pipe.

%Gallery-104264%The museum also tells the story of their father Patrick, the local pastor who was also a published author. Many a young woman’s ambitions were crushed in those days by domineering fathers who wanted them to get married and get pregnant. Patrick Brontë was progressive enough not to feel threatened by his daughters’ talent and encouraged them in their careers.

Beyond the Brontë parsonage you can see traces of their life everywhere. Patrick Brontë’s church stands nearby and houses the family’s memorial chapel. The pub where Branwell got drunk is just a short stagger away from the apothecary where he bought his opium. The Black Bull Inn still serves up fine Yorkshire ales, but the apothecary shop stopped carrying opiates when they started requiring a prescription. Otherwise it’s a good replica of an early apothecary and still sells traditional cures.

Haworth’s main street is down a steep hill lined with little shops. You can find delicious local cheeses and preserves, a couple of fine tearooms, some excellent secondhand bookshops, and more gift shops than you can shake a copy of Wuthering Heights at. Several historic inns offer beers and beds. At the train station a traditional steam railway offers rides.

But Haworth isn’t all tea and scones and twee little shops. There’s a dark side to the town’s history, full of ghosts, death, and despair. On my second day I discovered I was all too close to the supernatural. . .

This is the first of my new series Exploring Yorkshire: ghosts, castles, and literature in England’s north.

Coming up next: Three nights in a haunted hotel room!


This trip was sponsored by VisitEngland and Welcome to Yorkshire.

[Photo courtesy user Mr. Absurd via Wikimedia Commons]

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk – Torontonian Exploration!

by Stephen Greenwood on

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk, episode 30 – Click above to watch video after the jump

For those of you that attended this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, you may already know just how cosmopolitan Canada’s largest city is. Upon arriving, it’s safe to say that we completely underestimated the fifth most populous municipality in North America, but quickly realized its vast cultural offerings upon exploration.

There’s more than meets the eye in Toronto, so watch as we shake off the Virgin America party from the night before and explore the exciting neighborhoods of the world’s ‘most diverse city’!

If you have any questions or comments about Travel Talk, you can email us at talk AT gadling DOT com.

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Links
Check out Gadling’s own guide to budget travel in Toronto!
Visit the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere! The CN Tower.
And whatever you do, don’t miss out on Kensington Market – full guide available here.

All images used under a Creative Commons license. All music used courtesy of Nonstop Music.

Colonial Williamsburg farms for the future

by Laurel Miller on

Guilty confession: I got “D’s” in U.S. History. I just don’t get all wound up about battlefields, or ye olde anything. It may come as a surprise, then, that I recently paid a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, a registered historic landmark and living museum on the Virginia Peninsula. Why would I do such a thing, given my very unpatriotic educational record, and tendency to be freaked out by period costumes worn in public? Two reasons: love, and cows. Rare breed cows, to be exact.

I grew up on a small ranch where we raised horses, mules, goats, rabbits, and chickens. My dad is a large animal veterinarian who once observed, in all seriousness, “Laurel has a way with cows.” It’s true I was a bit of a bovine-whisperer in my youth, although I wasn’t too stoked when Dad felt it necessary years later to impart that information to my gleeful college roommates. I did, however, manage to convince my parents to let me raise a Jersey heifer for a 4-H project, so at least my talents weren’t wasted.

My love of dairy animals led to my current position as a contributing editor for a consumer cheese magazine, and I frequently write about humane livestock management. When my boyfriend moved to rural Virginia for work last year, I suddenly found myself looking for local story material to pay for my visits from Seattle. That’s how I discovered CW’s Rare Breeds program.

CW’s Coach and Livestock department started the program in 1986, as a means of “preserving and showcasing” heritage livestock and poultry breeds similar to the ones used to help establish the agricultural economy of the colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. While authenticity is in keeping with the CW’s educational objectives, there’s a bigger reason behind the breeding program: preserving genetic diversity in livestock, and preventing the extinction of the historic breeds still in existence.

The advent of modern agriculture has led to the development of a few select breeds of livestock and poultry, designed for maximum output, in order to meet global demand for commodity products such as eggs, milk, and meat. Many heritage animals retain genetic traits such as disease resistance, tolerance to climatic extremes, mothering traits (sometimes lacking in modern breeds, who are often separated from their young at birth), and physical characteristics that make them better suited to specific geographical environments. Some of these breeds are so scarce, their estimated global population is less than 2,000. The Rare Breeds program has been so successful, the American Livestock Breed Conservancy has declared it an “outstanding historical, agricultural representation. Colonial Williamsburg is a pioneer…in conservancy and breeding.”

Richard Nicholl, director of Coach and Livestock and founder of the Rare Breeds program, has a more simple way of explaining it. “We’ve distilled our meat, poultry, and dairy industries down to just a few hybrids. If something happened to one of those breeds, it would have a serious global impact upon our food supply and food costs. Here, our job is to give life to the Historic Area, and provide education. I want children to be able to walk up to a fence, and be encouraged to pet an animal. We’re so totally disconnected as a society about the source of our food.”

Last month, Boyfriend and I spent a few days in CW, so I could talk to Nicholl, and take a tour of the state-of-the-art stables- something that’s available to the public through CW’s “Bits and Bridles” tours (book them at the main ticket office, when you purchase your visitor’s pass). Nicholl, a native of England, grew up working on various farms. While an agriculture student, he visited an uncle in Virginia who raised carriage horses. Nicholl’s fascination with the animals and heritage of horse-drawn transportation eventually led him to his present position, although he’s also the Chairman of the Driving Committee for the Federation Equestre Internationale, and a Course Designer for the sport of Combined Driving.

While Nicholl’s passion is for horses (the farm currently has two rare breed animals in residence: an American Cream Draft, and a Canadian horse used for carriages and riding), he’s equally devoted to the flock of 45 Leicester Longwool sheep- one of the only breeding herds in the U.S.-and his Devon Red cows. The farm also breeds heritage chickens such as Nankin Bantams, Silver Spangled Hamburgs, and Dorkings (I wonder why that name was lost to antiquity?).

The Rare Breeds program came about when Nicholl and his staff were trying to improve the crossbred flock of sheep they had at the time. They acquired a Leicester ram, although in 1986, finding heritage livestock was no small feat. Nicholl specifically wanted existing breeds that were also native to the region in the 18th century. He tracked down a Leicester breeder in Australia, where the animals are used for milk, wool, and meat, and had the ram shipped over. The next acquisition was a Red Devon cow, a breed that originally arrived with the Pilgrims, via Southwest England. Small, hardy, handsome cattle with russet hides, Devons were a multi-use breed, used for draft, milk, and meat. When CW’s first cow was purchased from New Hampshire, there were less than 100 Devons left in the U.S., and they were extinct in England.

Today, the program has approximately 20 cattle, which are variously used for public demonstrations on plowing and (occasionally) milking. Says Nicholl, “We’ve lost many of the dairy breeds of cattle to extinction, but the Devon is increasing in popularity-another rancher in our area is now using them for their grass-finished beef. This is a great example of the importance of the Rare Breeds program. It’s been very successful, as well as popular with visitors.” Nicholl is quick to point out that having too many animal species in the program is problematic. “It’s hard to let go; you can’t save every breed. We don’t have pigs now, but we encourage Mt. Vernon to raise them. It’s not sustainable to have too many animals.”

Some shops in the Historic Area sell wool from the sheep, and there are scheduled kitchen demonstrations of 18th-century food preparation, as part of CW’s Historic Foodways program. Some of the demos, including meat cookery and ice cream, butter, and cheesemaking, feature mutton and milk from the farm. It’s ye olde observation only, but fellow dairy dorks will enjoy The Cheese Shop, a family-owned, modern store in Merchant’s Square, adjacent to the Historic Area. There are over 200 domestic and European offerings to choose from, including Virigina farmstead cheeses from Caromont Farm, and Meadow Creek, as well as artisan bread from Richmond, a beautiful array of condiments, made-to-order-sandwiches, and other picnic fixings.

If you’d rather have a restaurant meal, skip the touristy taverns, and eat at the Fat Canary, which adjoins The Cheese Shop (and is owned by the same family). The restaurant is a pleasant, contemporary, casual-to-fine-dining spot with a patio and hopping bar. The food is mostly of the Southern American genre, with an emphasis on regional ingredients. Boyfriend and I had a very nice dinner that included a starter of housemade mozzarella with Virginia ham, roasted tomatoes, and pesto, and crispy Virginia soft-shell crab with roasted chili butter. If you’re still in need of a cheese fix, the Williamsburg Lodge offers “Wine, Wit, and Wisdom” classes, which are essentially cheese tastings punctuated by lots of wine and banter between their executive chef, wine and beverage manager, and sommelier. Not for serious oeno- or turophiles, but entertaining.

The Rare Breeds program is funded through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; Donations can be made here. Be sure to reference the program on the form.

Go here for a Devon clotted cream recipe, a traditional English treat that really needs to be embraced Stateside, like the cows who inspired it.

My trip to Virginia was sponsored by the Virginia Tourism Corporation, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Greater Williamsburg, but the opinions expressed in this article are 100% my own.

Must have: Swiss fondue

by Annie Scott on


If you find yourself in Switzerland, you absolutely must treat yourself to some fondue. The Swiss are known for fondue because they invented it and they do it right. It’s tremendous.

Swiss fondue is served in earthenware pots with handles, none of that crazy stainless stuff you see nowadays. Traditional ingredients for melting include cheese (of course), cheese with truffle oil (pictured), cheese with tomato (see gallery), cheese with wine, peppers, mushrooms, and a number of other combinations. Usually, bread is dipped — first into a small container of a strong liqueur, if you’re into that, then into the cheese pot — but in some cases, boiled potatoes are also used. Chocolate is not a traditional fondue ingredient, and wasn’t really heard of until the 1960s. Meat fondue (where you dip raw meat in hot oil to cook it) developed a little earlier than that and is very similar to a Chinese hot pot, but Swiss fondue goes back to the 18th century (and some allege the original concept dates back as far as Homer’s Iliad).

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The cheeses are usually Emmentaler, which is what we think of as “Swiss cheese,” with the holes, Vacherin or Gruyere. The fondue should be warm enough to be smooth, but never burn. A perfectly served fondue forms a toasted crust at the bottom, which you can see once you’ve eaten it all. If you burn it, you should feel bad about yourself.

In Seelisberg, you can have fondue in a funicular, which is fun to say.

I tried my first Swiss fondue at Café du Grütli (above), a Montreux restaurant which specializes in fondue. The restaurant was charming in bright yellow with funny decor like garden gnomes, butterflies and soccer stats on the walls. The wine was local to the Swiss Riviera and perfectly paired with the cheeses. After dinner, traditional after-dinner drinks like flavored kirsch (like schnapps) were served. I indulged in 86 proof apricot kirsch — perhaps it has to be that strong to help you digest all the glorious cheese.

One last important thing: Don’t go for Swiss fondue alone. You may think you’d never eat an entire pot of cheese by yourself, but you totally will, and then you probably won’t feel very good. Ever again.

My trip to Switzerland was sponsored by Switzerland Tourism, but the ideas and opinions expressed in this article are 100 percent my own.

Where Swiss cheese lovers must go:

by Annie Scott on


Swiss cheese is not all full of big holes like the stuff you see in American grocery stores. That’s a specific regional cheese called Emmentaler (from Emmental). Despite its holey reputation, some of the hundreds of varieties of Swiss cheese have no holes at all.

Appenzeller cheese falls somewhere in the middle; it’s a cheese with a few small holes per wedge. The holes are controlled by the amount and type of bacteria used to make the cheese. This is just one of the things I didn’t know I didn’t know about cheese production when I visited the Appenzeller cheese dairy in Stein, Appenzellerland, Switzerland (above). It you’d like to visit yourself, click here to make arrangements. It makes a great outing for families or fromage-o-philes like myself — they have a full free exhibition you can walk through, a video presentation, a gift shop and restaurant and, of course, a cheese shop. And yes, that’s a giant, wooden wedge of cheese bigger than my NYC apartment out in front. You can go inside it.

Now, onto what you’ll learn about the 700 year old Appenzeller cheese, renowned as the “spiciest cheese from Switzerland:”

The milk.

The dairy guys get to work at about 4 AM to receive and test the milk brought in by local farmers. They test it to ensure that the cows ate nothing but hay and meadow grass. If farmers bring in bad milk once, they get a warning; twice and they are banned.

To create a consistent product, part of the milk is skimmed, then slowly re-added to the whole milk to ensure an exact fat content. This is a practice older than most cheese dairies. Some of the milk gets sent to another dairy to be made into “dairy butter,” a regular Swiss grocery store item, and the rest is divided into Bio and Regular. “Bio” is the word they use for free-range and organic in Switzerland. Here’s an interesting fact: free range cows have to have their horns (humanely) removed so that they don’t hurt each other. Also, the prize cow of the bunch gets to wear this ginormous bell (right).

%Gallery-93805%From here, you may know the basics: milk is poured into a copper kettle and stirred with lactic acid bacteria and then rennet (a natural curdling agent made from the stomach of calves), it curdles into granules which are then pressurized into cheese molds, then the molds dry and are given a salt bath. After that, it’s all about the aging and the mysterious rind.

The rind.

The rind, technically created by the salt bath, is treated with a secret marinade of white wine and herbs. Only two living people know the recipe for Appenzeller’s famously spicy brine.

Appenzeller makes an assortment of different cheeses, and the different flavors are determined by aging, fat content and the amount of the marinade used.

The cheese passport.

Every Appenzeller cheese wheel bears a unique passport, saying the place and date it was made. The date stamp doesn’t include the year, because you should definitely not be eating unpasteurized cheese (meaning the milk was never heated to 75 degrees Celsius) that wasn’t made within the year.

The cheese passport is a very serious business for the Appenzeller folks, as it’s one of the things that helps them protect the quality of their reputation. If one of the dairy guys accidentally breaks or loses a cheese passport, he has to pay about $30 for it. This is to prevent them from the temptations of trafficking counterfeit cheese — one could make a pretty penny labeling cheap cheese with the Appenzeller passports. Appenzeller not only makes their cheeses meticulously, but they only sell the very best ones.

What happens to the waste?

Part of the reason that Appenzeller cheese commands a good price is that it is guaranteed to be of extremely high quality. They test cheese from each batch rigorously, rating it on a number of different variances. Cheese that doesn’t score top marks gets made into grated cheese, packaged cheese or it gets sent off to be put into sauce mixes.

As for the waste created in making the cheese, it all gets made into pig slop — it’s actually quite good for the pigs. That’s the kind of eco-friendly practice that made as much sense 700 years ago as it does today.

Photos by Annie Scott.

My trip to Switzerland was sponsored by Switzerland Tourism, but the ideas and opinions expressed in this article are 100 percent my own.