This outing was a rarity for this column - a linear walk returning along the same route, although with the option of a little loop at the start of the homeward journey.

It's the one stretch of the Bronte Way from which it is impossible to do a circular walk on account of the absence of rights of way between Ponden and Wycoller.

There is only one, and for much of the route that's concessionary. Before the Bronte Way was created, walkers had to travel for a substantial pArt of the trip on the road.

I learned this en route from the members of the Ramblers' Association (West Riding Area) who organised the walk as part of their Bronte Way Festival of Rambling earlier this month.

There were going on for 50 of us who assembled beside Ponden Reservoir on a day for which the weather forecast had been rather more encouraging than the reality. The sky was overcast and a cool wind was blowing as we headed up the road to pass Ponden Hall, the house used by Emily Bronte as the model for Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family in Wuthering Heights.

The path was well waymarked from start to finish, and for most of the time clear on the ground even after we left the lanes and tracks and headed through fields and bracken.

Soon the right of way (which the path still was at this stage) took a dogleg detour to avoid passing through the back garden of a rather splendid old farmhouse.

As we queued up not much further along to climb carefully over a rickety stile into a walled stretch of path, the first rain began. Cagoules were unpacked and, as the sky seemed to be growing more densely grey, over-trousers were dug out of the bottom of backpacks where they had been stowed "just in case" - though the forecast had made it seem highly unlikely that they would be needed.

How wrong that forecast was to prove to be.

As we plodded on, the rain took on that "set-in" feel. We were walking in single file now, on a path that wound through bracken as it followed the valley carrying the River Worth between banks incongruously adorned with rhododendrons.

The river was small here, but full nevertheless. The ground was ridiculously waterlogged for early August. Surely at that time of year it should be dry as dust, not clawing at your boots? It really has been a most peculiar summer. As we climbed towards the dam of Watersheddles Reservoir, just over the Lancashire border, the wind grew more and more ferocious and the rain increased. The Red Rose county was doing its best to repel the Yorkshire invaders.

But on we plodded, strung out, getting wetter and wetter and feeling downcast because what should have been glorious views on what is generally regarded as the most picturesque stretch of the Bronte Way were clouded by mist and rain.

It was a relief to arrive at the pretty hamlet of Wycoller, with its clapper and packhorse bridges and its ruined Wycoller Hall - said to have been converted by Charlotte Bronte into Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre.

Some members of the party disappeared into the toilets here, to dry off their drenched clothes under the hand dryers. The rest of us took refuge in the restored Aisled Barn, now an information centre with plenty of benches and tables for lunching walkers.

Some of our party were now planning to take a little detour here, recommended by Marje Wilson in her guide book to the Bronte Way. I, though, had had enough of that hellish Lancastrian weather, and with a couple of cheese sandwiches inside me headed back along the outward route.

Back in Yorkshire, the cloud started to break up and the rain eased off. By the time I made it back to Ponden reservoir, it was turning into a passable afternoon.

But I was too damp, despite my cagoule and over-trousers, to enjoy it all that much as I headed for home and a hot bath.

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