A couple of weeks ago, I lived my dream of visiting the Bronte Parsonage and walking the moors Emily, Charlotte, and Anne walked.

It almost didn’t happen.

Visiting this sacred literary site has always been number one on my bucket list. I finally got a trip to England on the books, with a weekend in Haworth (home to the Brontes) sandwiched between days in London. Jer had never been to the city before, so I wanted to give him a taste of its marvels.

We flew overnight, landing on Wednesday morning 9/16. We laid low that day. I’d used points to book us into the wonderful St. Ermin’s Hotel, whose past as a rendezvous for spies and the traitorous Cambridge Five intrigued us. The hotel leans into this, even showcasing a display of spy apparatus.

We played tourist on Thursday. Thanks to jet lag, I woke up in the wee hours of Friday morn. I casually checked our tickets for the train up north – and saw they were cancelled. An email explained there was no electrical service.

I ran down to the concierge desk in a panic. It was 5:30 in the morning and a lovely bellman I’ll call Ted explained that the concierge didn’t come on duty until 7:30 a.m. But seeing my distress, Ted said, “I’ll help you.” He came up with the idea of taking a bus, which hadn’t even occurred to me, found the correct schedule, and booked us. (Did I give him a generous tip and sing his praises online and to the hotel itself? You bet I did!)

The bus ride took twice as long as the train would have. It dropped us at a public stop in the middle of a city called Bradford, the bus company obviously being too cheap to pay the cost of docking at the town’s transportation center across the road. We dragged our luggage there in the wind and rain. As with everything these days, human help was nowhere to be found. I finally located the station manager’s office and begged for information on how to reach Haworth. After learning it would take an hour and a half on trains and buses, I bit the bullet and said, “Where’s the nearest cab stand?” He directed us outside the terminal, where we found a friendly cabbie who ferried us on a ride that took all of twenty minutes and cost 30 pounds at most. (As a point of reference, when we returned to London on Sunday and took a cab from Kings Cross Station to our hotel in the southwest Kensington neighborhood, it cost three times as much.)

We arrived in Haworth hours later than I planned but had a lovely dinner at the pub in The Old White Lion, where we also happened to be staying. On Saturday, we lived my dream. Not only did we tour the parsonage, we hiked seven and a half miles to Top Withens, the location that inspired Wuthering Heights. By that point, I’d caught a cold and was in a bit of a daze. The day was windy AF and if Jer hadn’t pushed on, I don’t think I would have made it. But he did and I did. First, to the Bronte Waterfalls:

Then up, up, up the moors to Top Withens:

On our way up the trail, we even caught Ponden Hall, the inspiration for Thrushcross Grange, in the distance:

Upon returning to Haworth, we celebrated our achievement with a stroll through the quaint village, which was more lively and less encased in amber than I expected. For dinner, we had another excellent dinner at the Old White Lion. Our room offered views of another pub, the Black Bull – just past the Kings Arms – where Branwell Bronte supposedly drank himself to death…

Looking at these photos, the visit almost feels like a dream rather than a dream come true. But the adventure was real. And truly once in a lifetime.

And I will forever be grateful to a bellman on the night shift at St. Ermin’s Hotel who saved the number one item on my bucket list from disaster.

Readers, what’s #1 on your bucket list? Is there a literary site you’d love to visit?

BIO: a recovering sitcom writer-producer of TV hits like WINGS and JUST SHOOT ME, Ellen is a bestselling author, Anthony nominee, and recipient of multiple Agatha and Lefty awards for her cozy mystery series. But she considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. Visit her at http://www.ellenbyron.com/.