IT was an appropriate sort of day on which to meet a breath of fresh air: an winter gale driving the rain horizontal and stripping the leaves from the trees to turn the road into a treacherous gold and bronze skating rink.

I hadn't really wanted to write about Chris Knowles-Fitton. Chris wasn't all that keen on the idea either - he thought that he not been in one of his many roles long enough to have much to say.

But t' Editor insisted. And (a bit of creeping here) t'Ed. was right.

For Chris K-F is more than a breath of fresh air, more of a storm force 12 blast of enthusiasm, energy, humour and activity all of which, I suspect, is camouflage for a very deep thinking mind.

But he is also Leader of Craven District Council, head of the controlling Tory group, and I don't like writing about councillors very much: they can say their own piece without any help from me.

However, how many aeroplane piloting, Monte Carlo rally driving, Old Harrovian international businessmen are there running (or rather, helping to run) B&Bs in the Yorkshire Dales?

Chris, 59, fetched up in the Dales as a boy thanks to a whim of his grandfather, a wealthy Huddersfield textile manufacturer, who used Upper Wharfedale as an escape from big business.

Grandad loved the area so much that he began to buy land around Appletreewick early last century. Dad loved the place, too, and the family acquired a disused railway guard's van which they dragged onto a plot of this land overlooking the River Wharfe to be used as a weekend retreat.

Bit by bit, the family focus moved away from the heavy woollen areas of the old West Riding and, in the Twenties, Dad - one of the first men in Yorkshire to fly and own his own aeroplane - built a Canadian style wood-frame house out of red cedar.

Today's planners would no doubt have a fit at such a thought, but Knowles Lodge, surrounded as it now is by hundreds of mature trees the family planted in the early days, is one of the most individualistic, eye-catching houses in Craven.

It is also a B&B, operated mainly by Chris's wife, Pam.

"I help out when I'm here but only doing the manual jobs like squeezing the fresh orange juice for breakfast," says Chris.

Now no-one in Yorkshire needs reminding of what happened to the textile industry but it was still going strong when Chris was born during World War Two (his aeroplane-mad dad was an officer in the RAF based near York).

His education was, shall we say, varied. He seems to remember best Mrs Parsey's kindergarten at Grassington ("I could do my tables up to 12 by the age of seven"), then on to a very posh prep school in Wiltshire ("most of the pupils went onto Eton") and even posher Harrow, Sir Winston Churchill's alma mater.

"From there, I went to Leeds University to study textiles," he recalls with a laugh. "It was then the most left wing university in Britain and Jack Straw, now the Foreign Secretary, was the radical leader of the National Union of Students. That was a bit of a culture shock."

He joined the university's air squadron, got his pilot's wings and a temporary rank of Pilot Officer, but a car crash in the South of France ruined his prospective service career.

Instead, he took up motor rallying as an amateur: he even competed in one minor event with Paddy Hopkirk, whose team took the world championship in the then revolutionary Mini Coopers.

He still does the Monte Carlo rally but the version of it for historic cars - "much less commercialised and much more fun".

By this time, however, the textile industry, which gave him his living, went into steep decline.

He worked for a while in the family business, then became an agent for various clothing companies, and now runs a business which supplies designer label goods for top fashion houses like Aquascutum, Burberry, Jaeger and Harrods.

This means regular trips to London. When at home, he helps Pam run the B&B. And, of course, spends a lot of time at Craven District Council where, despite his levity - "I was more or less dragged in off the street to become a councillor" - he is already making his weight felt.

He became leader of the Tory group only six months after his election, which may surprise some, but not those who know him a lot better than me. For it is here, I am reliably informed, that his "breath of fresh air" attitude comes into play - behind the scenes.

"I try as much as a can to de-politicise the process," he says. "After all, what's the use of politics when all you want to do is to stop dogs fouling the pavements."

That might sound dismissive. But he also calls for advice on some of Craven's top-business brains like John Goodfellow, chief executive of Skipton Building Society, and Roger Tempest, who has turned Broughton Hall into a supremely successful hi-tech businesses centre.

"We have very many good brains in this area," says Coun Chris. "I think it would be stupid if we did not ask them to help us out with their expertise."

So I walked out into the gale. It doesn't get much fresher, Appletreewick way.