After the ambitious outing a fortnight ago for a longish walk in North Yorkshire, here's a short stroll on the doorstep.

Horton Bank Country Park is ideal for an evening's saunter. Pick a good evening, with clear skies, and the views are superb.

This park is a marvellous new asset for Bradford, opened little more than a year ago after being created by Yorkshire Water around the disused Horton Bank Top Reservoir at a cost of £1 million and then sold on to Bradford Council for a token £1.

At the end of last year, the country park won a national award for its designers, Mirfield-based Grace Landscapes, for the positive contribution it has made to the local landscape.

I've been holding back from visiting it, wanting to give the newly-planted trees and wildflowers a chance to get themselves established rather than come across a stark, newly-created landscape. But now, after a wet winter and even wetter summer, everything has had a good start and the place is starting to look lush.

Coming upon the park is a delightful surprise. As you drive up Horton Bank and pass the top of Hollingwood Lane, there isn't a hint of what you will find if you turn off the road to the right and through the gates of the country park.

Suddenly you're in a wonderland. The track swings down to the car park, from which you can gaze across the newly-sculpted lake that has been created out of the remains of the reservoir.

Beyond are three man-made pyramids bright with meadow grass and wild flowers and beyond them, distant views of the countryside to the north and west of Bradford.

Follow the upper path around the park, with its neat, newly-built walls and its fast-growing trees, and the view is constantly changing. Climb the steps to one of its viewpoints and the landscape is laid out there before you.

Close to hand, the disused Thornton View Hospital and the rolling greenery of Clayton Golf Course. Then the buildings of Clayton and Thornton with the green fields in between, Denholme further in the distance to the west, and the bowl of Bradford to the east.

And then, on the horizon, the tree-covered knoll of Rawdon Billing, Baildon and Ilkley moors, and far away the television mast high above Lindley Wood Reservoir in the Washburn Valley.

The sky, when I left home, had been much clearer than it was when I finally arrived at Horton Bank Top and surveyed this scene on this mid-July evening. It had turned to a dramatic mix of grey and white clouds with now only occasional slashes of blue. But the air was clear and the views still superb.

I followed the steps down from the viewpoint to the banks of the lake and walked around it, passing children with fishing nets and wellington boots before taking a path between two of the pyramids to find more surprises beyond.

Water tumbled down a stepped conduit into a long, thin pond. Down below, between the pyramids and the golf course, was yet another pond, bristling with rushes, and around it various clusters of standing stones in strange designs.

What a remarkable place this is! Yet on the evening of my visit it had attracted surprisingly few people.

Apart from a handful of children fishing and a couple of strolling families, the park seemed to belong to the dog walkers.

Still, it's only a year old. These places take a while to catch on.

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