At this time of year, while the trees are still bare, from where I’m sitting I can look between two houses and see a patch of water of the local lake. Round here, they are called lodges. I think this practice started during the industrial revolution where a ready supply of water was a valuable commodity. All over Bolton small lodges were created, usually next to huge mills. Most of the mills are now demolished, but several of the lodges remain providing small oases of tranquillity in the urban landscape. My lodge is larger, prettier and more imaginatively named than most: Doffcocker Lodge. Right on the edge of town, it only has houses to three sides and is home to a range of water fowl. Protected by the local conservation trust, it remains peaceful and unblighted by commercial activity.

Beyond the lodge, if I allow my eyes to travel above the bare branches of the trees, I see a small band of houses and above them, low, golden moors. Golden isn’t a word often used to describe the West Pennine Moors at this time of year. After all, it would be hard to imagine anything so wet and Tupperware grey as a Lancashire sky reflecting any other colour than shades of old blanket. The sun rarely appears to cast its glow on the heather and grass to warm it. Today though, the moors bask and glow.

Atop the moors to the left stands a solitary TV mast that marks Winter Hill. Thin, silver and erect, it punctuates the sky line – more often than not, piercing the clouds. If I set off walking, I could be at its base within the hour. At night, the mast is lit from top to bottom with powerful red lights, I assume to avert some airborne disaster. Two years ago, I was persuaded to accompany the cub pack there on a midnight hike carrying twenty-three warm pasties in my rucksack. The midnight hike with the cubs ended with a local historian lecturing the boys on a murder committed there some one hundred and seventy years ago. The place the body was discovered is marked with a plaque on an iron stump. George Henderson, a twenty year old Scottish salesman, was shot by person or persons unknown. Twenty-three young boys now think his spirit roams the moors.

If I’m out and about around Bolton or travelling back from Yorkshire, this mast lights the way back to where I’m sitting now. It’s not just a geographical marker, but an emotional one. While I’m still a Yorkshireman at heart, I’ve chosen to live my life in a corner of Lancashire that now holds the most important emotional ties I have. The mast provides a beacon I can look towards and I sense that somewhere over in that direction is security and family. While it’s only a large transmission pole that marks the peak of a pretty ordinary hill – it broadcasts to me, something completely different – home.