Slaidburn in mid-February was hardly busy. I was the first person to use the car park by the green.

On the nearest farm, the horse had given way to the Bob Cat, a small four-wheeled vehicle with a scoop. It was operating a shuttle service between a muck-heap and a muck-spreader.

Having decided to circumnavigate Stocks Reservoir, joining the relatively new Circular Walk, I chose a dryish spell, when stepping stones on the river just north of the reservoir would be showing their heads above water.

My route led me north from Slaidburn, over the bridge and, with a right turn through a small gate, along a field path that led me within easy view of Hammerton Hall. This is named after a family who once owned a huge slice of Yorkshire, as far as Green Hammerton, close to York.

The Hammertons were benevolent. Towards the end of the 12th century, they gave 20 cartloads of hay to the monks of Kirkstall and two acres of land to the house of Edisford and the leprous brethren there.

From Hammerton, a field path led me to Black House, where I came under the unblinking stare of a piebald horse and a shedful of young beef cattle. I plodded on to the tarmac road and turned left. There was time, at Dalehead Church, to take heed of a notice and "pause and rest awhile" before walking on.

Standing on tiptoe, to peer over a high wall, I beheld Stocks Reservoir. Buffeted by a north-westerly wind, it was choppy, like a sea in captivity. Beyond the wall and to the left, my booted feet encountered a well-made path with a post that was plainly marked Circular Walk, courtesy of North West Water.

It was the first of a helpful series of posts that guided me round the reservoir, a matter of ten miles, in the company of curious sheep and wild birds.

Beyond a car park, I entered Gisburn Forest, where over 30 years ago, in near wilderness conditions, I watched sika deer, black grouse, short-eared owls and the barn owls that tenanted ruined farmsteads that had been swamped by conifer plantations.

Now there are well-made paths, cycle tracks and a short cul de sac that led me to a birdwatchers' hide overlooking the water. Despite the blustering conditions, birds were aloft. I watched a fly-past of squadrons of mallard and wigeon. A heron that climbed high ran the risk of being plucked. The wind moaned around the hide like part of the sound-track from a Bronte film.

Stocks reservoir was completed in the 1930s, supplying water to the thirsty folk of Blackpool and the Fylde. It is also a haven for waterfowl, including Canada geese and (if it is still there) a lone barnacle goose that consorts with them when it should be commuting to nesting grounds in Spitzbergen.

Crossbills nest in the tall pines, their nesting season beginning in winter, with the availability of seeds they pluck from pine cones with their twisted mandibles. The cock birds are red, the females green. They stay high and when looking for them I felt a twinge of neckache.

After passing through a conifer wood and traversing a wallside towards a ruined barn, the Circular Walk went left, zig-zagging down a green hillside to the river and the aforementioned set of stepping stones. I crossed without difficulty and had a snack at the ruined farmstead of Collyholme before venturing up the hillside.

Here was the track of an old railway that would lead me all the way to the dam. When the reservoir was under construction, the toot of steam locomotive and clatter of wagons disturbed the echoes between Jumbles Quarry, the source of good stone, and the vicinity of the dam, where it would be given its final dressing before being used to plug the valley.

As I followed the trackbed all the way to the dam, I side-stepped the muddy bits where drainage had been impeded and had some unkind thoughts about the person or persons unknown who had been responsible for the deeply imprinted tyre-marks. One stretch was impassable, having been churned up, leaving ruts half full of water.

I passed a row of boats used by anglers and left the trackbed for a short climb to where the workmen's village had stood. Jack Cottam, son of the resident engineer, was my guide when last I visited this place. (Jack died last year at his home near Carlisle).

He showed me where rail wagons with barrels of ale had been driven into the hangar-like building used as a recreation centre. He took me to the derelict building, roofed in corrugated iron now fringed by rust, which was once a smart hospital, run by a resident nurse.

On my Circular Walk I strode along the well-manicured grass of the damside. The overflow from Stocks seethed over a cill and down a finely-engineered spillway to once again become the River Hodder and to resume its stately progress down an unspoilt Bowland valley to join the mighty Ribble.

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