Wetton

Toe wrestling and the Royal Oak

Ye Olde Royal Oak sits exactly in the middle of Wetton, and in 1976 a few of its regulars invented toe wrestling, wanting a uniquely British sport. The inaugural World Toe Wrestling Championship was promptly won by a Canadian.

The pub has stood over 400 years, with a list of landlords going back to 1760. Diane and Gary took it over in October 2018, helped by their son Dan and daughter Zara. The kitchen does handmade burgers — beef, pork, chorizo and chilli, minted lamb — a steak and ale pot pie with slow-cooked rump, and a fish pot pie with smoked haddock and prawns. There's a beer garden, undercover seating, and a drinkers' lounge with a log burner. The cask ales include Desert Storm and Isobar IPA, with guest ales from the Wincle and Storm microbreweries. Dogs are welcome: "we just ask for dogs to be on a lead and kept off our furniture."

A high village and its walks

Wetton is a compact stone-built village of limestone cottages, perched at around 1,000 feet high above the Manifold Valley in the White Peak. A local visitor guide describes the cottages as seeming to "huddle together for protection" against the moorland weather. The oldest buildings, Manor Farm House and Hallows Grange, date to the 16th and 17th centuries.

The walking is the main reason to be here. Thor's Cave is about a mile off — a limestone cavern with a 60-foot entrance, 350 feet above the valley, reached by a short but steep final scramble. The Manifold Way runs eight miles of level tarmac along the former light railway, pushchair- and cycle-friendly. Dovedale Stepping Stones are about 3.7 miles from Wetton in a straight line; the road journey is longer. Beresford Dale and Wolfscote Dale offer quieter riverside walking.

Arriving and finding refreshment

There's no station and no regular bus — the light railway closed in 1934 — so you reach Wetton by minor moorland roads off the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton. A car is essential.

Beyond the pub, the village hall runs a vintage tearoom on Fridays and weekends, hot drinks and cake aimed at walkers. A mile off at Wetton Mill there's another, in a former grist building beside the river. In dry spells the Manifold disappears underground through sink holes near the mill, re-emerging downstream in the grounds of Ilam Hall.

St Margaret's and deeper history

The Church of St Margaret keeps an early 14th-century tower — the rest was rebuilt in 1820 after a fire — with gargoyles at the belfry stage and an unusual external staircase up to the bells. Open daily, under the motto "in the community, for the community, with the community," it welcomes muddy boots, dogs and cyclists.

Wetton doesn't appear in the Domesday Book, unlike its neighbours; the earliest known reference is to "Wetindona" in a late-12th-century document, from the Old English for "wet hill." The village schoolmaster for fifty years, Samuel Carrington, was also a nationally recognised archaeologist. In 1849 he excavated a Bronze Age cairn at Long Low, a mile southeast, finding a limestone chamber with the bones of thirteen people.

The championship comes home

The toe wrestling moved away for a while, to a pub near Ashbourne, but returned to the Royal Oak in 2019. That May, Alan "Nasty" Nash won the world title for the sixteenth time. He also holds a Guinness World Record for smashing 60 eggs with his toes in one minute.