IT WAS a brilliant sun-lit evening and I was canvassing in Wensley Fold. I know the area pretty well, for six years from the time I became candidate in 1977 I stayed with close friends there. But this evening in late April was a revelation.

I knocked on the door of a house. It was answered by an elderly lady, who smiled broadly. That in itself was good news, as two doors earlier I'd had a serious ear-bashing from people on the verge of voting BNP.

"May I count on your support, Madam?" I asked. "Yes, of course", she replied. "You lot have done well and I'm very happy."

"Thank you," I said, "and, out of interest, what makes you so happy?"

"Come through and I'll show you," she said.

She flung open the back door and said: "That's all I need. I've lived here for 44 years. How could anyone not be content with that view?"

The scene across town was breathtaking. The sun was in exactly the right place to light up the greens of the countryside in exquisite detail. Of course, I've looked across town a million times. But this view was something else.

This lady's 44 years have coincided with the period since the introduction of the Clean Air Act, which phased out the belching dirt of coal fires and industrial steam engines.

The transformation of the town and its environment since then have been dramatic and it's one more reason why I get so irritated by people in London who still believe Lancashire towns are full of dark, Satanic mills with shuffling figures in clogs.

I'm writing this on another plane on the way to an area with some of the most beautiful hill-top views in the world, the Holy Land. But the tragedy of this area -- Israel and the 'Occupied Territories' (Palestine) -- is that life for most is far from beautiful.

For six million Israelis (of whom a million are Israeli Arabs) their life since the intifada began in September 2000 has been overshadowed by the ever-present fear of terrorism.

A thousand Israelis have lost their lives. For the Palestinians, the intifada has meant high levels of unemployment, extremism and the humiliating presence of the Israel Defence Force.

Around 3,000 Palestinians have lost their lives, with many more injured on both sides. Israeli settlements have sprung up on Palestinian land and the security barrier has divided communities.

For a long period the situation appeared hopeless but in the last few months there's a cease-fire of sorts and elections have taken place in the Palestinian Authority for a president, Mahmood Abbas.

And the Israeli government has made an historic decision to withdraw from Gaza.

The anger, which is so marked amongst both sides, must give way to some painstaking practical steps and difficult compromises.

That line about dark, Satanic mills comes from William Blake's wonderful hymn Jerusalem. The challenge for all is to make Jerusalem and these benighted areas once again "a green and pleasant land".