With some trepidation I have been trying to take a circular walk around Fewston reservoir for years. For some unknown reason I have never been able to make it more than a third of the way round. On Sunday I went up there again, intention seemingly held and even though I got maybe 50 yards further than before mental stumbling blocks forced me to turn back.

I was left asking myself why a straight forward seemingly undemanding walk was becoming such a huge challenge. Why the self defeating thoughts? Where do the doubts come from? What was I afraid of? Yesterday I decided that I needed to push on through the fear, but maybe it's not always about plowing the same path instead why not look at the challenge from a different perspective.

One constant in my unfulfilled challenge is that I have always gone about this circular walk in the same clockwise direction and from the same starting point on the circle. Does it have to be so? A circle is a circle from which ever point you begin and whichever direction you travel. So today I venture up to this beautiful haven and started walking in the opposite direction from previous visits.

I begin by walking across the dam. The reservoir is slowly thawing at the edges as the water thunders through the channel down the weir into Swinsty. The remaining vast skin of ice sits atop the blackness of the water below. Trees of all ages and descriptions walk down to the banks, through which the pathway edges alongside the snaking line of a drystone wall. Now the snow is almost all melted away the colours return. Luscious green grasses mark the fields above the trees and bold mustardy yellow leaves litter the ground.

Somehow the trees act as an escape from the darken depths of the water. Before I know it I'm almost halfway round Fewston and I come across a small promontory with a wooden bench casting a view back from whence I came. I sit and drink in the landscape, it's stillness, the pallet of natural colours and the lapping sounds of the water. Rejuvenated I move on turning the top of Fewston to find the last resting place of a canoe. Maybe when the sun is at is highest it can be fixed up again and carry travellers on different paths.

Becky picks up a young friend lost and confused having become separated from her new family. Back and forth this little one ran, unsure who was who. Eventually we stopped and waited. Two groups of walkers went by and no recognition was made. Then the ears of the young pup twitched, a red coat was visible in the distance and off she ran back home.

The last stretch is more familiar territory having been traversed many times in the last few years. Now what felt strange was knowing I had been unable to get beyond this place before. Maybe my lesson is to take a different approach to seemingly insurmountable obstacles.