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To walk up all Mount Road out of the village of Marsden is something of a vertical takeoff,

so best done in winter when you can cool the body's engine by sucking cold air deep into the lungs.

I try not to ease off until I've reached the bench.

In days gone by, it was just a point along the journey, a benchmark, you might say.

But these days, it's a useful place to catch my breath on the pretext of pausing a while for poetic thoughts.

And even after only five minutes or so, the village has become a view, cupped in the head of the valley, collared by Moorland, the massive empty mill at bank bottom rotting away towards the status of eyesore.

Bright chilly days are my favourite kind of weather, and on this walk at this time of year, you'll never be heading into the glare of the sun.

Instead, companionable but unassuming, it strolls with you at your left shoulder, yellowing the valley sides,

which you'll notice now have become moorland, bordered with dilapidated dry stone walls, devoid of trees, apart from the odd hawthorn,

tidy knots by the wind. Turn right just before Puleside working men's club, it looks like you're not allowed, but you are. After two very steep fields of ankle-breaking tussocks, it's a relief to clamber out onto a farm track and find another excuse to take in the vista below, which now has the scale of a map rolled out in the direction of Huddersfield.

The bumpy terrain across this ridge is known locally as the lumps, the lumps being made from soil and stone extracted from the railway or the reservoirs or the canals, according to my dad.

The brick structure, away to the right, is one of several shafts bored vertically into the moor to let stale air and fumes out of the three-mile

long Stanich tunnel in the age of steam. I'm heading for the bald head of Pule Hill, the high point

above Marsden and an exposed lookout post over Yorkshire, Lancashire and a high corner of Derbyshire.

There are rock faces and caves along its west-facing escarpment.

I have a poem called Snow carved into the wall of a disused quarry on that flank

and sometimes go there to check how it's weather in.

But otherwise, I'm content sitting at the peak, gorp in at the physical

geography centrifuged across 360 degrees. Bronze Age cups have been recovered from a nearby

burial site containing charred human remains. With the ghosts and the dusk gathering, it's probably time to head back. The low sun

will have enough candle power to usher you home if you've timed it right.

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