The history of the Peak District is writ large on this walk. Starting way back in time when volcanoes spewed out their lavas, the walk enters one of the loveliest dales in the White Peak, but it was where orphaned children were unable to enjoy its delights. Climbing out of the dale, the way is across fields whose layout would still be recognised by the medieval farmers who ploughed their furrows with pairs of oxen. Two villages come next, Litton and Tideswell, the latter with its church classed as the ‘Cathedral of the Peak’. From there the way back to the car park follows back roads and footpaths laid out well over a hundred years ago. The volcanic activity mentioned above took place in what is now known as Tideswell Dale. The hillside to your left, on walking down the dale, has some quarried areas of dark coloured rock between layers of limestone. These are the remains of lava flows that spewed out of volcanic vents surrounding a tropical lagoon that once covered what became the White Peak of Derbyshire. At the dale end the path joins the main, or Miller’s Dale down which flows the clear waters of the Derbyshire River Wye. A mile or two downstream the river enters its prettiest section, aptly called ‘Water-cum-Jolly Dale’, but before it reaches this sylvan glade, the river once powered a cotton mill whose young operatives lived a life of hell. This is Litton Mill to which orphaned children were brought from workhouses as far away as London to enter a life of cruel servitude as so-called apprentices. Nowadays the mill having ceased production, has been converted into apartments and its subordinate cottages are now lived in by locals whose ancestors may well have been those orphans apprenticed to slavery. There...
