Icy weather conditions can play havoc with a walker's plans in a variety of ways.

But I reckon the reason I failed to set out on my proposed outing the Sunday before Christmas will take some beating.

The intention was to drive up to High Bentham, a village just to the west of Clapham, to put a new map of that area to the test. It was a glorious day for it. The sky was clear, perfect for photographs. The air was crisp. In fact the air was about as crisp as I can remember it in a long time, and the whole world seemed to be frozen solid.

My car is not a winter car. I have to pamper it, covering the windscreen with a polythene sheet to keep the frost at bay, squirting WD40 in ample quantities into the front-door locks and protecting them with a dangling cloth tucked under each handle to prevent them freezing solid.

Despite the intense cold, this routine had worked. I unlocked the car, unwrapped the windscreen, stowed boots and backpack into the boot, climbed in and started the engine. Perfect.

Unfortunately, though, the accelerator pedal was stuck solid. Presumably some water had found its way into the cable and frozen. This car was not going anywhere. Forget High Bentham until another day. Plan B was called for.

Which was how I found myself catching a bus to Shipley for a walk I'd been intending to do for some time but had never got around to - a towpath trail along the canal towards Leeds that can use either the train or the bus to return to the start.

I joined the towpath at Shipley, crossing the iron footbridge behind Killips carpet shop and the veterinary practice and turning right. Soon I was passing the splendid packhorse bridge near the canal basin at Dockfield, with the stump of the spur which used to be the Bradford Canal still evident.

Within minutes from there I was out in the country. The factories which now line Otley Road at Charlestown were screened from me by a high embankment on my left, and fields and woods rose up on the right to Windhill and, before long, to Thackley.

I passed the swing bridge at Buck Lane, with the remains of a cobbled track leading left down towards the river and its iron footbridge close to the site of the long-demolished Buck Mill.

The canal towpath led me straight ahead, with the expanse of Thackley Woods across the canal and the riverside fields below on my left as I walked on towards the old iron railway bridge that once used to carry the Esholt Sewage Works saddle tankers and their loads across the canal.

In summer this is a green corridor, a leafy tunnel with limited visibility other than straight ahead. Now, though, with the trees bare, it offered more distant views through the trunks and branches.

The towpath here is a firm and very walkable surfaced with packed-down hardcore. In these weather conditions it was harder still - as were the grass verges on either side of it. As I walked down past the Esholt locks and made my way towards the swing bridge, though, the towpath deteriorated into a series of frozen puddles.

I picked my way carefully across them, the low morning sun bouncing off them into my eyes, and was striding out again at the other side when there was a thud and a cry behind me.

I spun round to see a girl jogger lying on her side on one of these sheets of ice. Before I could get back to help her, though, she was on her feet and, thanking me for my concern, set off running again - slowly and limping at first, then picking up speed as her confidence grew that she had done no serious damage to herself.

That's Sunday-morning people for you. They're the get-up-and-go people. I met quite a few of them as I walked on towards Apperley Bridge: jogging, walking their dogs, out for a brisk stroll in the bitter breeze of this bright morning, riding their mountain bikes.

From Calverley cutting onwards, though, I saw hardly a soul until I was almost at Rodley. Rabbits and horses in canal-side fields foraged for what they could among the frozen grass. A pair of moorhens strutted in the reeds. Swans battered their way through the ice.

It was the whiplash sound of this ice, as it expanded, which accompanied me throughout the walk. From time to time leaves like sails scudded along it, overtaking me - for fortunately I had the wind on my back, protecting me from the worst of its bite.

It was just past Rodley, where canalside mills have been flattened and the land turned over for attractive housing development, that I realised I was in trouble. Walking boots are fine for field paths, footpaths and bridleways. They aren't ideal for rock-hard towpaths over any distance. I should have worn trainers.

There was a definite tenderness developing under my left heel, slowing me down as I made my way towards Kirkstall past a post which told me there were still more than four miles to go to the heart of Leeds.

I had a look at the bus timetable that I'd tucked in my pocket before I set off. If I could make it to Kirkstall Bridge in the next 15 minutes, there should be a bus to take me back to Shipley.

And so there was. As I walked to the main road from the towpath, a 760 came round the bend and pulled up for me as I half ran, half hobbled, towards the stop.

My left foot was extremely grateful.

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