The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East CoastVarious
History
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast
Various
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Rivers -- Great Britain
Leaving Beresford Dale, we come to many enticing passages on the Dove,
troutful and leafy, where rock and water and woodland make combinations
that are the despair of artists. Wolfscote Ravine, Narrow Dale, Cold
Eaton, Alstonfield, Load Mill, and Mill Dale are but topographical
expressions, but to those who know the Dove they cease to be words, and
become scenes of enchantment. And now we are in the Dove Dale of the
tourists and the trippers, the painters and the picnic parties, the
fly-fishermen and the amateur photographers. The guide-books have done
Dove Dale grievous injustice by "heaping Ossa upon Pelion" with such
misleading epithets as "grand," "majestic," "stupendous," "terrific,"
"awful," etc., _ad nauseam_. Dove Dale is only imposing by its
surpassing loveliness, its perfect beauty. A romantic glen three miles
long, narrow and winding, it is a dream of pretty scenery. Limestone
cliffs close in the clear and voiceful water. Their precipitous sides
are draped to the sky-line with a wealth and wonder of foliage, the
white tors shining through the green gloom. The wooded slopes, rich
with wild flowers, ferns, and mosses, just admit of a pathway by the
water, which is now white and wavy with cascades, and now a dreamy calm
in reflective pools. Each turn in this romantic valley has its surprise
in scenery. A revelation awaits each step.
[Illustration: ILAM HALL.]
Some of the impending crags have such an individual character that
they are known by particular names, such as Sharplow Point, the Twelve
Apostles, Tissington Spires, the Lion's Head, the Watch Box, the
Straits, the Sugar Loaf, the Church Rock, etc.; whilst perforations
in the rock forming natural arches and caverns are entitled Dove
Holes, Dove Dale Church, Grey Mare's Stable, Reynard's Cave, Reynard's
Kitchen, the Crescent, the Arched Gateway, the Amphitheatre, the Abbey,
and so on. These limestone tors, standing out from their green setting,
assume castellated shapes. Here they suggest a bastion, there a spire;
now an assemblage of towers, anon a convent church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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