Riding Wood Reservoir

The walk around Riding Wood Reservoir is straightforward and flat - which means families with younger kids won't be complaining about their legs halfway round. It's a proper water body that draws local walkers and the odd fisherman, set in that characteristically green South Yorkshire landscape near Holmfirth where the hills start to get interesting but haven't yet become the Peak District.

You're looking at a circuit of roughly three miles if you do the full loop, though there's no rigid rule about it. The path is well-trodden and the reservoir itself is calm water, the kind of place where you notice the light changing on the surface more than anything else. It's not dramatic - no cliffs, no rare birds, no Instagram moment waiting to happen - but that's rather the point. This is walking for walking's sake, not for ticking boxes.

It works well as a morning outing if you're based at one of the nearby campsites - Whitegate Leisure is just under a mile away, making it ideal for a pre-breakfast stretch. Families will find it manageable; keen walkers might feel it's a bit gentle for the afternoon. The reservoir is free to access and open to the public year-round, though you'll want to pick a day when it's not actively raining sideways, which in Yorkshire is not always guaranteed.

Combine it with a wander into Holmfirth itself - it's the Yorkshire of Last of the Summer Wine, all steep streets and chip shops - or head towards the higher moors if you want something with more teeth. On its own, Riding Wood is the warm-up act, not the main event.