Lindley Wood reservoir on a beautiful spring day

This was a new walk for me as I’ve driven past Lindley Wood reservoir many times but never actually walked around it.

Lindley Wood reservoir is the first reservoir you come to in the Washburn Valley when you leave Otley. There isn’t a circular walk around the reservoir like the others but there are plenty of paths in this area to make your own circular walk over lots of different terrain.

We had originally planned to start our walk near the trig point. Unfortunately, there were already cars in the layby and not wanting to cause problems by parking on the side of a narrow road, we decided to park somewhere else on our walk. We ended up parking just over Lindley Wood reservoir viaduct where there were some parking laybys. I think after doing the walk, this was probably the best place to start.

We walked back over the viaduct and then swung left and followed the river Washburn until we met a little stream. We crossed the stream and said goodbye to the river, walking up the valley through Dob park woods.

Lindley Wood reservoir just before it turns into a swamp and then becomes a river

It was a warm day and walking up the hill I ended up taking off a few layers. It felt nice to feel the sun. Once out of the woods we followed a track through some farm land and past the remains of Dob park lodge. We came to a road and followed this to the busy road which leads out of Otley and where we had wanted to park originally. Thankfully we only stayed on this road for a short distance to get a trig point.