This short walk can be fitted in with a trip exploring more of Dovedale or simply as a day out combined with lunch at one of the hospitable pubs in villages round and about the valley. It is over 300 years since Izaak Walton fished in the pure waters of the river Dove along with his impecunious friend Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, near Hartington. Apart from light traffic along the short stretch of modern road through Milldale, the two friends would easily recognise this part of the dale. Dovedale and its famous trout stream have changed little since Walton and Cotton spent time along its banks, angling and philosophising.  Walton referred to the Dove as being ‘The finest river that I ever saw and the fullest of fish’; a sentiment true even today.  Many of the houses in this tiny hamlet are founded on dwellings that would have been standing in Walton and Cotton’s time.  The village takes its name from two mills that once provided employment for people living there; remnants of both mills remain, still capable of taking power from the river.  Lode Mill is higher up the valley; converted into a barn, it once ground and separated lead ore from the parent limestone.  The mill closest to the village is Ochre Mill; powered by water from the leat which begins a few yards upstream of Viator’s Bridge, is also recognisable as a barn, but in its day it produced powder for making red lead paint. In his angling treatise The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton refers to himself as ‘Viator’ (traveller), and addresses Cotton as ‘Piscator’. (angler).  In the book Walton expresses amazement at the narrowness of the bridge which bears his nom-de-plume, ‘Viator’. The route followed by this walk follows the river downstream from Viator’s Bridge...