The River Dove's name is allegedly derived from the Old English word dubo, meaning "dark". It rises on the gritstone moors of Axe Edge between Buxton and Leek, in the Pennines, and flows south through various dales (gorges) until it reaches Dovedale, after which it joins the River Trent at Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire. It is most famously associated with Izaak Walton, the 17th-century personality who was a friend of Charles II and who wrote the first book on fly fishing, The Compleat Angler, a work to which some still refer today. With his friend Charles Cotton, who in 1681 produced the poem The Wonders of The Peak, he popularised Dovedale.

Here are some photographs of the river below its egress from Dovedale, working upstream towards the southern entrance to the gorge.