The plan was to stay in the Ribble Valley, just over the border into Lancashire, and use our hotel as a base to give us an early start while we walked the fields and hills of this pleasant, under-exploited part of the world.

Unfortunately, we chose the late-September weekend of Weather from Hell. The wind raged and the rain came sideways in bucketsful and Pendle Hill, which should have been in clear view from our bedroom window, refused to emerge from its mantle of cloud.

It took hardier souls than us to set off walking in such conditions. Instead we drove, peered at the world past windscreen wipers, and made occasional sightseeing forays in our caghoules.

And there is indeed plenty to see in this area, which is barely an hour's drive from Bradford yet very different in atmosphere to the adjacent Yorkshire Dales - thanks in no small way to the Lancashire burr in the accent of the people who live there.

There's Clitheroe for a start: a smashing little market town of hilly, winding, shop-lined streets topped with an 800-year-old castle and museum. Clitheroe has a sculpture trail on the outskirts of the town, and a Platform Gallery situated in the old railway station housing a continually changing series of contemporary craft exhibitions.

There are scores of delightful villages: like Downham, where the absence of television aerials gives an impression of straying into the past. If you saw the film Whistle Down the Wind, with Hayley Mills, you will have seen Downham, which sits in the shadow of Pendle Hill on the banks of a duck-busy river.

What that film didn't show you, though, is the public lavatories next to the car park and information centre. They are, uniquely, converted from a cattle byre, and spotlessly clean.

Further to the west is Waddington, a picture-postcard village dominated, in summer, by a delightful floral park. Henry VI took refuge here at Waddington Old Hall but was flushed out by Yorkist sympathisers. He escaped but was soon captured in Clitheroe Wood.

There are the sound-alike villages of Sawley and Whalley, one as far north of Clitheroe as the other is south and each boasting a Cistercian Abbey - though the one at Sawley is in ruins while Whalley's is, in part, used as a retreat and conference centre.

There is a huge amount to see and do in this green and pleasant part of the country - an area which Bradfordians largely ignore as they pass through it on their way to Blackpool. There's even shopping-until-you-drop if you want it, at that vast clothing and household goods emporium Boundary Mills, a short drive away at Nelson.

But it was particularly the prospect of walking which drew us to the area. It offers so much variety - from gentle, riverside strolls, to the high fells of the Trough of Bowland to the north and, of course, the ever-present challenge of Pendle Hill with its variety of routes to the summit.

Those delights denied us by the weather, we adjourned to our hotel after a wet sightseeing tour for a spot of people watching.

Stirk House Hotel, a converted 16th-century manor house just beyond Gisburn on the A59, is renowned for its functions and is fast winning a reputation as a conference centre - thanks largely to its good size-range of meeting rooms and its excellent leisure and exercise facilities to help executives and employees unwind after a hard day's brain-storming.

But if you ask anyone from around that area what Stirk House is best known for, the answer will come back: "Wedding receptions".

There were two of them taking place on the Saturday afternoon, one of them including the wedding ceremony. That meant two receptions to be choreographed by Malcolm and Karen Weaving, who own Stirk House. Plus two evening disco parties as well - one for 200 in the ballroom, the other, smaller one in the restaurant. Then there were the 60 members of the same family who were there for a weekend reunion....

And on top of that were a few weekend break people such as ourselves. It was lively, to say the least. A good time was had by all - even those of us who were on the sidelines, discreetly watching all this activity taking place and wondering at the organisation which must have gone into making it all work so well.

Malcolm used to be in business in the dyeing and finishing sector in Huddersfield, but when the going got tough in that industry thanks to technological changes, he drew on his National Service training in the Army Catering Corps for a complete career switch to the pub and restaurant business 16 years ago.

The Weavings have been at Stirk House for a couple of years and have built up the business nicely, steadily improving the downstairs rooms and moving on to upgrade the bedrooms. They seem to have achieved a great deal.

What was beyond their control, though, was that weekend's weather. It kept us in and ruined our walking plans. But the following week the sun shone and I drove up to Downham for the day, early and alone, to see something of what we'd missed.

Tell you about it in next week's Walking column.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.