Ogden Water Country Park – 19/08/2026 – Leader Stephen D

18 walkers gathered at Ogden Water Country Park which is a few miles north of Halifax. The day started off dry and bright as we walked down through the woods and along the reservoir path offering occasional glimpses of the half empty reservoir. It was up and down through Ogden Clough and steeply up a rocky staircase onto the open moor, the heather looking resplendent in its purple cloak.  Glimpses to our right showed Thornton Moor Reservoir but better views to our left showed Leeming Reservoir and Oxenhope beyond, although we could see the dark clouds gathering and the rain heading our way.  The rain came down just as we were about to have our elevenses and we all put on our waterproofs.  Joining ‘The Millenium Way’ for a while we crossed a couple of fields to reach Long Causeway and then another field led to Pit Lane which we followed all the way into Denholme.

 Crossing the busy A629 we followed a narrow path between houses which would have been very overgrown if Paul and I hadn’t cleared it of nettles and bracken on the Sunday before the walk!  Shortly after we arrived at Doe Park Reservoir and walked around it to the far end. The footbridge over the outflow stream was closed and rather than take a 2-mile detour round I decided to go across the bridge to ‘test it’ and told the rest of the group to come across one at a time, it was fine. 

We had lunch by an old railway bridge just as it stopped raining and afterwards, we all removed our waterproofs just as we hit a busy main road.  It remained dry and sunny with a cooling breeze for the remainder of the walk. 

 Unfortunately, due to quarry activities and their removal of some footpaths, this led to us having a rather long walk up the busy road to reach the next footpath which led us onto Perseverance Road (!) – Perseverance being in short supply when Paul and I battled our way through many blocked and overgrown sections on this part of the walk during our first recce!

We passed by a succession of isolated houses, gradually descending to eventually reach another main road, then crossed 3 large fields to reach Keighley Road and then along a country lane, climbing steadily back to Ogden Water where most of us had ice lollies at the café before returning to our cars. 

9.25 miles    1064 feet of ascent.    2.2 M/h

Many thanks to Kev for his excellent back marking and to Vince for taking some excellent photos. Thanks to Judy for uploading the pics to Flickr. 

Write up – Stephen D.   Pics – Vince

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