Dovedale - Tourism

Tourism

Starting in the 18th century, visiting gentry would enjoy visiting the beauty spots of Dovedale and Ilam in the summer.

With the improvement in road transport and the arrival of the railways making travel easier, Dovedale's popularity with visitors expanded and began to embrace all social classes.

In the early 20th century there was a growing appreciation of the great outdoors and by 1931 Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government held an inquiry which recommended the creation of a ‘National Park Authority’ to select areas for designation as National Parks, and Dovedale was one of the areas proposed. It was eventually included within the Peak District National Park when it became Britain's first National Park in 1951.

From 1899 the Ashbourne-Buxton railway line ran to Thorpe Cloud station, above the village of Thorpe, making Dovedale accessible to walkers. This line closed in the mid 1960s and was converted into a walkers' and cyclists' path known as the Tissington Trail. Earlier in July 1937, Staffordshire County Council had converted the nearby Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway into a tarmac path now known as the Manifold Way. Walking is a popular reason for visiting Dovedale. 21% of visitors in a Peak National Park visitor survey conducted in 1986/87 gave walking as their main reason for visiting the area. Both the casual and the serious walker find suitable walks - the most well trodden walk being that along the river bank between the car parks at Thorpe Cloud and Milldale. A footpath count on this track on an August Sunday in 1990 recorded 4,421 walkers on the Staffordshire side of the river and 3,597 on the Derbyshire bank. Unfortunately this intense popularity has caused serious problems of congestion and erosion because of the damage caused by the many thousands of pairs of feet.

Fishing is also a popular activity due to the associations with Walton's The Compleat Angler, and some of the fishing rights are owned by the Izaak Walton Hotel (which is part of the Duke of Rutland's estate, and stands at the southern end of Dovedale on the Staffordshire bank, SK143508).