Many travellers leave the glen at Mill Dale, where a pleasant country lane to the right enables them to gain the high road between Ashbourne and Buxton. Time and strength permitting, however, we would strongly advise the tourist to make his way by the river banks to Hartington, passing through Beresford Dale, where at Pike Pool, represented in the frontispiece to this chapter, all the beauties of the Dove Valley are concentrated at one view. A limestone obelisk stands in the middle of the river, with a background of rich foliage, just touched, at the time of our visit, with autumnal hues, while the clear water eddied and sparkled around its base. This pool was the favourite resort of Walton and his friend Cotton. Many allusions to the spot will be found in _The Complete Angler_; and the comfortable inn at Hartington, reached from Beresford Dale by a walk for about a mile through pleasant meadows, bears Charles Cotton's name. At Hartington, the high road to Buxton may be taken; or, far better, the traveller may make his way to the famous watering-place by the plateau which divides the valley of the Dove from that of its tributary Manifold; he will then descend to the former valley near Longnor, and thence may climb to Axe Edge, a great outlying southerly branch or spur of the gritstone, from which the Dove has its rise. Parting with this lovely river at its very fountain-head, we find it difficult to believe that so much beauty and even grandeur can have been included in the twenty miles' course of a little English stream, and are ready to endorse the enthusiastic tribute of Cotton: "The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine Are both too mean. Beloved Dove, with thee To claim priority: Nay, Thame and Isis, when conjoined, submit And lay their trophies at thy silver feet." [Illustration: 0118]