The South Pennines is a landscape where the ruins of the textile industry — cotton around Todmorden, wool everywhere else — dissolve into steep moorland valleys and mill-side streams. Spanning the municipal boroughs of Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, it feels like a place caught between eras: handsome stone towns, derelict mill towers, and some of the best walking in northern England.
Hebden Bridge is the most visited town in the area and worth the attention. The valley at Hardcastle Crags just above it — where two rivers meet in woodland owned by the National Trust — offers excellent walking without much effort. Gibson Mill at its heart was one of the first mills to switch from water to steam power, and has been restored as a visitor centre that runs entirely off-grid.
Haworth is Brontë country: the parsonage where the sisters lived is now a museum and still draws literary pilgrims despite the gift-shop overlay around it. Todmorden and Ripponden are quieter and more workaday, but both have mill ruins worth poking around. The Rochdale Canal runs through the region and makes for good towpath walking along the valley floors, and the Pennine Way climbs out of the Calder Valley toward Stoodley Pike, the gritstone obelisk that dominates the southern skyline. For cyclists, the long Cragg Vale climb out of Mytholmroyd is one of the most-ridden ascents in northern England.
The old Industrial Museum in Halifax, just outside the area's boundary, is one of the best museums of its kind in England.