When you've done as many walks as I have over the eight years of writing this column, every one different, you can't always remember everywhere that you've been.

Then, suddenly, you turn a corner and a sense of deja vu grips you. You've been here before as part of a different outing, but maybe walking in the opposite direction.

I experienced that feeling twice on this walk around the Haworth and Ponden area - a part of the district criss-crossed with footpaths and offering a wide range of different routes.

My walk began on at 8.30 on a cool, windy mid-October morning from the car park near the Bronte Parsonage. There were not many people about, which was hardly surprising given the uncertain state of the sky. Most of it was grey, but patches of blue peeped through the fast-moving clouds.

I set off comfortably in my old boots, my new ones having failed the big-toe-nail test on a walk with a long descending stretch and been consigned to the back of the cupboard.

These were old friends. I was happy in their company as I took the path across the bottom of the graveyard and soon turned up the lane that would lead out on to Penistone Hill Country Park.

This was glorious open countryside. Soon I could see much of the route I was to follow, heading westwards into the Pennines with the wind-lashed waters of Lower Laithe Reservoir below me and the sturdy houses of the hamlet of Oldfield on the far side of the valley.

I left the country park, crossed the road and struck out along the good track towards the Bronte Waterfalls, experiencing the first moment of flashback. I had walked this track before, travelling the other way in a thick mist.

I passed a ruined farm that would have been a family home in the days when the literary sisters walked this way. Bales of hay trussed up in black polythene added a modern touch.

The falls, when I finally descended the steps towards the Bronte Bridge and looked up at them, were in fine form. The rains of recent weeks had fed them nicely. What a shame, though, that that silver birch tree chose to grow where it does, obscuring the view of the falls and getting in the way of a good photograph!

Soon I was on the move again, climbing steeply up the other side of the valley and following the clearly waymarked route before heading down the farm track towards Ponden reservoir and walking on past Ponden Mill to the road.

From there on its was field paths for a while, picking my way among the fresh cowpats while keeping a careful eye out for the cows on my way up the hill towards the road running through Oldfield with its many signs pleading for the village school to be saved.

I strode along looking for the telephone box mentioned as a landmark by Marje Wilson in her excellent book The Bronte Way and then on to the cattle grid at the top of the lane leading down to a fields path on the way to a magnificent old packhorse bridge across the River Worth.

Soon I was climbing again, up towards Haworth and coming to a stile which, I remembered, I had climbed maybe five years ago in the opposite direction on my way down into the valley.

Familiar old places, and familiar old boots, had turned this into a walk I felt very comfortable with.

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