The people of the villages of High and Low Bentham, five miles west of Clapham, have for years resented the fact that they're always on the edge of Ordnance Survey Maps.

So they got together as Bentham Development Trust, applied for funding from a variety of sources, and with the money sponsored their own 1: 25,000 map from Harveys, the Perthshire mapmakers.

Now they have one with their twin villages right in the middle - an impressive, waterproof production covering a wide area of the western dales and the Forest of Bowland.

But this is more than a mere map. It's also a guide to the area with the Benthams at its heart. On the reverse are details of pony-trekking rides, cycle routes, fishing, rail links, accommodation - and guides to four walks based on one or other of the Benthams, each with their individual map.

It was one of these I chose to do in early January, to put the map to the test. The four-mile walk didn't look as if it would be too demanding. Just the thing, in fact, to tone me up a bit after all the food and drink of Christmas and the New Year.

High Bentham, I found when I drove down the main street and made my way to the car park, is a working market town rather than a tourist centre. It has a well-established look about it, from the old Hovis sign above its baker's shop to the castellated outline of St Margaret's Church standing among trees on the skyline.

It was past the side of St Margaret's that my route from the village lay, then through a field of grazing sheep and their watchful ram on my way to cross the Leeds-Lancaster railway line before climbing up the evocatively-named Cowslip Hill.

The day was dull. But although rain threatened, it never arrived and the sky brightened as I walked through field after field - first above the northern bank of the River Wenning, then returning via the southern side of the valley with excellent views of cloud-capped Ingleborough opposite.

At one point, passing a deep, tree-filled gully, there was a flurry of movement and a large, dark, white-rumped deer loped off through the woodland. Following the directions on the map for this walk, I missed my way a couple of times but soon found it again.

I have to say, though, that it would have been easier if the Harvey map, like its OS equivalent, included field boundaries. The footpaths are very clearly marked, but it does help if you know whether a path goes, say, to the north or south of a wall, or whether a stile is in the middle of a fence or in the corner of a field.

That reservation aside, though, this is a map for the people of the Benthams to be proud of. It should help a lot to popularise their villages and the splendid farming countryside around

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