Circuits from the cottage to Dovedale

In order to walk the Limestone Way without using B&Bs, we'd booked a holiday cottage. We were relatively late booking and we had expected limited availability; to be honest it wasn't as bad as we'd expected, but the one suitable-looking cottage that was available for our first choice of week was Shepherds Retreat one of three newly converted barns in the complex known as Lees Barn. We booked it without doing as much research as we would normally do, but it was perfect! Lees Barn is close to the LImestone Way and relatively accessible, being quite close to the A515, whilst being sufficiently far from the road to feel remote - and the cottage itself was lovely. I say this without having been inside either of the other two cottages, but I suspect that Shepherds Retreat, although the smallest, is the nicest of the three; it is detached, and slightly removed from the others. The three barns are only recently converted; Shepherds Retreat was first rented out in May and at the time we stayed here the barns were still showing in their dilapidated state on Google Street View! Lees Barn is marked on the OS map at SK157568,

The cottage was within a few hundred metres of the Tissington Trail and less than a mile above Dovedale. We used the Tissington Trail in order to start or end two of the legs of the LImestone Way at the cottage. However it would have seemed a great pity not to get down to Dovedale, which we have visited before but don't know well. Fortunately, in addition to completing the Limestone Way in our week at Shepherds Retreat, we were able to leave the cars in the cottage on two days and follow the path down to Coldeaston Bridge on the River Dove and from there to explore first to the north and then to the south. Our first walk was on Sunday 5th September, which was also our 40th Wedding Anniversary and we wanted to be back at the cottage by 3pm as our son and daughter-in-law were coming over to see us from Sheffield.

This walk was 9.2 miles of walking overall and its route is shown on first map on this page. Allowing for a break for coffee in Hartington and a lunch break, it took us 4.5 hours. All of our photographs taken on this walk are shown here. We had a relatively leisurely start , for us, leaving the cottage about 8.50am . The path from Liffs Road down to Dovedale at Coldeaston Bridge is very close to the cottage, just a couple of hundred metres away in the direction of the Tissington Trail and the A515, and it was easy to follow the instruction to follow the wall, past the grazing cattle. The path descends steadily and perhaps halfway down there is a wood. There is a stile through to the other side of the wall at this point and it appears that the downward path continues on both sides of the wall, but we made the mistake of staying on the side we were already on i.e. keeping the wall to our right. This led to a rather nettly and uneven descent. However, after a rather longer descent than I'd expected (the cottage is shown on one side of the OS map but Dovedale is on the other, making it difficult to estimate lengths) we were there by the river, with a sign (up the correct side of the wall) telling us it was 1 mile to the Tissington Trail; I can believe that. We were also by an old building, apparently the Coldeaton Pumping Station.

We turned right and followed the river upstream, soon passing a bridge over which the route to Alstonefield leaves. We were were surrounded by classic and delightful Dovedale scenery, with steep, craggy and sometimes wooded valley sides, and a clear burbling brook in the valley bottom. At the point where Biggin Dale and Wolfscote Dale separate we took Wolfscote Dale, the left hand option. As we got further up the valley its character became more moor-like and eventually we crossed onto the other side of the stream and climbed up out of the valley., again taking the left hand (more direct) option when there was a choice of two routes to Hartington. We hadn't been bothered too much by other people on our walk through the valley, but as we followed well-worn paths across the fields to Hartington, it was getting quite busy with Sunday morning walkers.

We descended into Hartington, straight past the public toilets, which doesn't sound very salubrious (but useful!) and we were also right next to the Hartington Farmshop and Cafe, so we stopped for a cup of coffee, Afterwards, we pottered around the pretty village before climbing up on a minor road out of the village, passing the Hartington Hall Youth Hostel (where a rather grainy photo confirms that I stayed with my friends Janet and Rona in 1974). We continued to climb, aiming for the Tissington Trail for our return leg to the cottage, though when we discovered benches at Heathcote Mere (where water has gathered because there is an impermeable layer of volcanic rock on top of the limestone) we stopped for lunch.

We joined the Tissington Trail and followed the former route of the Buxton to Ashbourne Railway line as far as our cottage. It was getting quite busy but had some advantages. For example, shortly after joining the Trail we realised that we were walking past "Ruby Wood", actually named in honour of the 40th Anniversary of the Peak District National Park in 1991, but wanted a record of us at Ruby Wood on our ruby wedding anniversary, and didn't have two much difficulty getting a passing cyclist to take a photo. Later, our fellow trail users provided amusement, in the form of a man dressed in top hat and tails who came cycling past on a penny-farthing. We got back to the cottage in plenty of time to be ready for the visit of our son and daughter-in-law. Our daughter-in-law is medically vulnerable, so we hadn't seen them since before the Pandemic. The afternoon and evening, enjoying the Shepherds Retreat's private outdoor seating and eating area with Michael and Heather, was very special too. It had been a lovely wedding anniversary.

Our second walk including Dovedale was on our final day in the cottage. We had completed the Limestone Way the previous day in glorious weather, but the weather forecast for Thursday 9th September had been poor all weak, with rain - and thunder and lightening. However, by the previous evening the forecast had eased to give a gap of several hours from around 9am to around 2pm in which the probability of rain was lower, so we decided to take the chance. By the morning, there was no sign (in either reality or the weather forecast) of the promised early morning thunder storms, so we got out walking straight after breakfast - and the weather held for almost the whole time we were out. The walk was a total of 13.5 miles and it took us 6.75 hours, allowing for a lunch break. All of our photographs taken on this walk are shown here and a map of our route is at the bottom of the page, We started off on the same descent to Dovedale that we'd used on Sunday, though today we crossed to the other side of the wall close to the entrance to the wooded area, and the path was MUCH better.

Today we turned left and followed the River Dove on a well-made path for a mile or so downstream. There were a few other people about, but it wasn't too busy, and we had the company of a dippers, a couple of herons and a kingfisher. Also, in places, the sound of the bubbling water was very atmospheric. We reached a pretty bridge and I initially thought we were at Milldale, but that's another kilometre or so to the south-west. It wasn't clear whether the path of the east side of the river continued, so we crossed the bridge and walked along the pavement by the minor road that runs by the river all the way to Milldale. There are "no parking between 10am and 5pm" signs all the way along the road, which no doubt indicates how busy it gets, but thankfully it was still well before 10am and we were only passed by a couple of cars.

Milldale village is indeed very pretty and here we crossed back over the river on the Viator's Bridge, made famous in Izaak Walton's 1653 book "The Compleat Angler". Now we took the path through the famous part of Dovedale, a 3-mile section past various limestone crags, caves and pinnacles, including Dove Holes and Ilam Rock. Unsurprisingly, it was getting rather busier, though I'm sure nothing like as busy as in the middle of summer on a day with a more reliable weather forecast. Eventually, at the bend in the river we reached the famous stepping stones (just below Thorpe Cloud, but I didn't realise that at the time). We had to wait for two couples to cross the stepping stones ahead of us, and they all seemed to to find it quite difficult; I am not great at stepping stones, but I have to admit that I didn't have any difficulty with these.

We were soon at the Narional Trust Dovedale car park. There is a path from here to Ilam, but we missed the start of it so followed the road, past the entrance to the Isaak Walton Hotel. We were soon in the model village of Ilam, which was re-created by Jesse Watts Russell, a wealthy industrialist who rebuilt the Hall in gothic style and then moved the village out of site and rebuilt it in an alpine style. The Hall is now owned by the National Trust but part of it is leased by the Youth Hostels Association. I think I might have stayed here on my youth hostelling holiday in the area in 1974, and we dropped Helen off here in 2007. However, I didn't remember it at all, whilst Richard also visited in March 2016 when he was in the area (I think I'd been working) and suggested a similar route to the one he took then for today, though apparently the weather was rather better today.

We started by walking up to the Hall, past the Church with its over-sized memorial chapel to Jesse Watts Russell's father-in-law, then we cut down across the Hall's terraces to the river (the River Manifold here) and followed it along for a while. At a bridge, we climbed back across the country park, stopping for an early lunch before continuing back to Ilam Village. We took the minor road by the School and climbed and climbed, with lovely views opening up in all directions. We reached the brow of the hill and continued on to Stanshope then, still on the road, we descended to the head of Hope Dale, and then climbed again to Alstonefield, passing the delightfully named "Top of Hope Farm". I am very grateful to Richard for pointing out the problem with my idea of taking the footpath from Stanshope to Alstonefield because that would have involved descending right into Hope Dale before immediately climbing out of it again,

We sat on one of benches in Alstonefield for an apple; it is a pretty village and worth noting that it has two car parks. We hadn't needed to park here though, because we were not that far from the cottage. However one last unavoidable descent (down to Dovedale) and climb back up (to Lees Barn) remained. We followed another couple out of Alstonefield along the road and then off on a track, past the Youth Hostel. The path continued pretty much on the level for another half a mile, before descending quite steeply. When we got down to Dovedale the other couple had sat down for a break, whilst a third couple were also sitting above the river, apparently sketching the view. We just kept going, because the weather was becoming a little threatening, though I was a little anxious because one of the comments in the visitor book in the cottage had mentioned the steepness of the climb. It started to rain just as we left the wood, so w didn't hang about. I was rather pleased with myself for the rapid progress we made up the hill. I was also very pleased that we managed to get back to Shepherds Retreat before the worst of the rain. We watched the rain while eating a celebratory ice-cream, left over from our shopping trip on Monday. The walk had been a lovely end to a superb holiday.