The collision of a solitary wave, travelling over a horizontal bed, with a vertical wall is investigated using a boundary-integral method to compute the potential fluid flow described by the Euler equations. We concentrate on reporting new results for that part of the motion when the wave is near the wall. The wall residence time, i.e. the time the wave crest remains attached to the wall, is introduced. It is shown that the wall residence time provides an unambiguous characterization of the phase shift incurred during reflection for waves of both small and large amplitude. Numerically computed attachment and detachment times and amplitudes are compared with asymptotic formulae developed using the perturbation results of Su & Mirie (1980). Other features of the flow, including the maximum run-up and the instantaneous wall force, are also presented. The numerically determined residence times are in good agreement with measurements taken from a cine film of solitary wave reflection experiments conducted by Maxworthy (1976).