Start from the car park at the southern end of Fewston Reservoir Dam, where there are toilets, including facilities for the disabled.
Turn right, walk down the main road towards the dam and go through the kissing gate onto the footpath that runs along the western shore of Fewston reservoir. This path is easy to follow: for most of its length is within a few metres of the water.

After about three kilometres (two miles), a five-barred gate leads into the lay-by beside the A59 at Blubberhouses. Turn almost immediately back on yourself, crossing a stile beside a County Council footpath sign and climbing a steep pasture.

Cross the ladder stile at the top and head diagonally to the left across a broken down wall to the next wall corner. Keep this wall on your right, cross a wire fence and head for a mature oak tree with a stile to the right of it. Cross the stile to join an obvious track: now keep the wall to your left.

After the next gateway the wall that accompanies the track is on the right. Continue through a squeeze stile into an open field and head for the gate straight ahead. Cross the stile next to the gate, follow the remains of a wall before that peters out, then head uphill towards a solitary tree in an old boundary line. Follow the track that is visible on the ground across to the wire fence with some mature hawthorns beside it. Keep this fence on your left until you arrive at three gates. Go through the middle gate: the track down the hill becomes a lane with a squeeze stile and a footbridge into the wood.

Head up through the plantation, crossing a metalled track after a few hundred metres into a birch wood. On approaching the road, there is a gate from the plantation into the road - use the stile twenty metres to the right of the gate.
Go through the gate on the other side of the road and head diagonally left to a squeeze stile surrounded by a wooden fence. After the squeeze, keep the wall immediately on your right until you reach a gate with a wide squeeze to the left, after which the village of Timble is in view. Head downhill towards a patch of trees, pass through a pair of gateposts without a gate and then through a proper gate. Aim for a gap between the wall and the house in front of you, cross a stile beside a wrought-iron gate and follow a track which leads out to the road at Timble.

At this point it is possible to cut short the walk, turning left and walking back along North Lane to the car park. The road gives excellent views in all directions, but it is narrow and extreme care must be exercised in walking along it, especially if there are children or dogs in the party.

From Timble, where there is a pub, cross the road onto a tarmac lane that turns to the left almost straight away. Beyond the last house in the village, turn right at a footpath sign onto a narrow track. Follow this briefly to a sharp right turn, then take the stile into the field on the left. Go straight on and when you reach a wall, keep it on your right until you have crossed two other walls. Head diagonally left down to a wooded stream valley. A footbridge crosses the stream; the path climbs the far slope to a stile into a pasture.
Keep to the right of the wall and head for an oak tree, where the route joins a more obvious track. Cross a stile beside a gate into a lane; the next gate is also accompanied by a stile.

Turn left in the middle of the farmyard. Cross a stile at the corner of the barn on your left and keep the stream to your right, heading for the bottom corner of the wood ahead. Follow the bottom edge of the wood to a gateway, then head towards a birch tree at the top of a bank. Go down the steep bank to a tiny footbridge across Timble Gill Beck.
After crossing the beck, keep to the right; you will find yourself beside the River Washburn. Follow the river past a concrete bridge (do not cross), then join the farm track that leads through the fields towards Swinsty Dam.
Follow the track beside the spillway, do not cross and follow the track all the way back to the car park.

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