In the middle of Milldale a wooden signpost reads "Pub 1m" and points up the lane. The pub is a mile away, in Hopedale. The village itself is a dozen or so grey limestone cottages, most of them 18th-century, set at the head of Dovedale where the River Dove is crossed by a narrow packhorse bridge. Ducks have the run of the place. There is no phone signal and no internet.
The pub the sign points to is the Watts Russell Arms, an 18th-century stone freehouse named after James Watts Russell, a wealthy local businessman. The kitchen does tapas-style small plates, made from scratch with local suppliers and changing with whatever's in, with vegetarian and gluten-free options. The ales are the reason to walk the mile: an ever-changing Thornbridge range including Jaipur, plus a local flat cider. There's a beer garden and dogs are welcome. Children under ten are not permitted inside. The hours are limited enough that you should check before setting off.
Back in the village, refreshment comes from Polly's Cottage, a café served through a shop window with no indoor seating — you take your drink, ice cream, sandwich or pasty to the benches by the river. It's named after a former occupant of the cottage, and it runs seven days a week from April to October, weekends only through the winter, closed in January.
The other building of note is the National Trust information barn, which has toilets and a water tap and occupies the converted stables of the corn mill that gave the village half its name.
The mills are gone now. Milldale was named for two of them. The corn mill stood until the mid-19th century, and the Ochre Mill, on a small island in the Dove, ground powder for red-lead paint until it was demolished around the same time. Its foundations and a millstone remain. Upstream, at the entry to Wolfscote Dale, Lode Mill ground corn until 1929.
The bridge is the thing everyone photographs. Viator's Bridge is a medieval packhorse crossing, built without side walls so panniered horses could get across, and it carried silk and flax from Wetton and Alstonefield for centuries. It takes its name from Viator — "traveller" — a character in Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton's *The Compleat Angler*, which made Dovedale famous. Viator's verdict on the bridge, in the book: "Why! A mouse can hardly go over it: 'tis not twelve fingers broad."
From here the walking is the main event. It's about two and a half miles down the dale to the Dovedale stepping stones, past Lovers Leap, the Dove Holes caves, Tissington Spires and Reynard's Cave. The path north leads into Wolfscote Dale and on toward Hartington. A free national park car park sits 300 yards from the village, rarely full.
There's no station and no bus worth the name; Ashbourne, the gateway town, is about fourteen minutes' drive along remote lanes, and SatNav is advised.
In 1898 William Hambleton was refused a drinks licence and opened a temperance hotel instead. Decades later, Nancy Bennington sold mineral waters, sweets and postcards by the bridge, and the Manchester Evening News called her "the grand old woman of Dovedale."
