Oh to be in England’s magical Peak District in summertime. Of the Derbyshire national park’s bountiful delights, few surpass Dovedale, a limestone gorge dotted with sheep grazing on its rocky slopes above a river easing past luxuriant grass.

Visit at dawn and this tranquil valley feels suspended beyond time. Weary travellers find succour here. And down the centuries, writers, poets and artists have rhapsodised over Dovedale’s rare splendour. John Ruskin, the Victorian essayist, called it ‘an alluring first lesson in all that is beautiful’. In Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet mentions her own restorative visit to Dovedale to Mr Darcy.

Sadly, Elizabeth would probably think twice about visiting now – especially if she read the excoriating reviews on Tripadvisor.

They tell the depressing story of how ‘one of England’s most spectacular stretches of countryside’ was transformed into a chaotic ‘no-go zone’ this summer by overcrowding, litter, barbecues, ‘Third World toilets’, visitors washing pots and pans – and sometimes themselves – in the river, and even the occasional whiff of marijuana.

‘It has become an overcrowded, dirty place,’ said James, from Sheffield, who visited last month and posted a review online.

‘Used to be a tranquil spot... unfortunately it’s now a hotspot for a new type of crowd who ignore a lot of the signs there (saw multiple BBQs, toilets absolutely rancid, a complete lack of space... and not much consideration for other people who use the site).’

His sentiments are echoed by dozens of others. One woman said: ‘Did not feel safe as a solo female hiker... I was very intimidated and overwhelmed by the people that were dominating the place.’

Another review said: ‘It has been destroyed like so many places in the UK. If you haven’t been for 20 years you will think it’s a different place.’

And a tourist from Southampton said that having last visited several years ago ‘our good memories soon faded and I’m sitting here writing my review with tears in my eyes... we are truly disgusted.

‘Absolute chaos in the car parks, roads impassable, toilets disgusting, hundreds of people with food, tents, rugs… This experience will stay with me for a long, long time. Hopefully, my childhood memories will suffice to remind me what Dovedale used to be like. A beautiful place ruined.’

Certainly anyone perusing social media videos of Dovedale during the heatwaves would have noted its resemblance at times to a festival. On a Saturday afternoon not so long ago a huge fight broke out at its celebrated stepping stones over the River Dove, which marks the boundary between Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

Had the evidence not been posted online, it would scarcely seem conceivable. Yet it is there for the world to see, a brawl featuring men clobbering each other with sticks in a valley described by Lord Byron as ‘Little Switzerland’ and used by generations of artists to illustrate the power of nature over mankind. 

As a retired solicitor who lives in a nearby village told me despairingly last week: ‘What have we become? We used to treat our national treasures with respect. It sometimes strikes me that we don’t deserve them.’

Police said of the incident that a caller reported an ‘altercation between two groups’ and that ‘a child in his party was hit during the disturbance and that an attempt was made to steal his wife’s purse’.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t what our Victorian forebears had in mind when they laid the stepping stones in the late 19th century to stimulate tourism.

Violence and anti-social behaviour are not all. As The Mail on Sunday has discovered, there is something else disturbing about Dovedale – as it has become an unlikely racial battleground.

Earlier this year, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs outlined diversity plans to make the British countryside less of a ‘white environment’. It said in a report: ‘We are all paying for national landscapes through our taxes, and yet sometimes on our visits it has felt as if national parks are an exclusive, mainly white, mainly middle-class club.

‘Many communities in modern Britain feel that these landscapes hold no relevance for them. The countryside is seen by both black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and white people as very much a “white” environment. If that is true today, then the divide is only going to widen as society changes.’

Dovedale, owned and managed by the National Trust, has no trouble attracting minority groups, however, and has been popular with Muslims in particular for some years.

If only it could be celebrated as a model of harmony. For Dovedale now seems to be attracting the attention of far-Right groups, apparently unhappy with online videos of families enjoying the scenery and picnicking by the river.

Only last month a group of activists, draped in England flags, held up a banner in front of the stepping stones bearing the words: ‘Mass deportations are necessary.’ On a video, one of the men is heard saying as he films an Asian family in the background: ‘They say it isn’t a takeover... We’re literally the only white people this side of the river.’

On another day a man turned up and recorded a video of himself spouting white supremacist tropes, which he later posted online.

Thankfully, their distasteful views aren’t widely shared. But locals and other visitors are not without concerns. In 2021, Shaykh Mohammed Aslam, a Muslim cleric from Birmingham, planned a religious gathering for 600 people in Dovedale to celebrate Mawlid al-Nabi, a Muslim holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

Free minibuses were laid on for the hike that aimed to ‘increase brotherhood, strengthen bonds, relax the mind, help rejuvenate the soul, and allow us all to truly appreciate the creation of Allah...[in] a renowned beauty spot’.

As it transpired, it was called off at the last minute because of Covid restrictions but not before stirring unease among nearby residents. A local newspaper reported that the ‘event had alarmed locals, who have been growing increasingly frustrated by hour-long traffic queues and huge gatherings’ in nearby villages.

It added: ‘In many cases, the influxes have led to mountains of litter being left.’

A villager said at the time: ‘I respect everyone has a right to come and enjoy the countryside, and of course I accept that it’s part of living in a beautiful area, but recently it’s just getting too much.’

One group, Muslim Hikers, has been credited with successfully making the countryside more inclusive. Started by Coventry-based rambler Haroon Mota, it describes itself as ‘a trailblazing organisation committed to promoting diversity’.

More than 150 people took part in one of its hikes to Dovedale, which was organised in conjunction with Strava, the fitness app.

Of another event, Mr Mota said: ‘The Ramadan Retreat is probably one of my favourite Muslim Hikers events to date.

‘It felt incredibly enriching and powerful to share breaking the fast and praying together, against the backdrop of the green peaks of Dovedale.’

Meanwhile, in response to the protest by far-Right activists last month, a UK-based Palestinian ‘influencer’ posted a video from Dovedale in which he pretended to have persuaded the local authority to declare the area ‘Britain’s first Islamic national park’. He also joked about plans to build a mega-mosque on a nearby hill.

As ever with social media, his stab at satire rebounded. Predictably, many took him at face value and expressed outrage.

Two weeks later, for instance, Paul Porter, another influencer, solemnly warned his 14,000 Facebook followers about the ‘Islamic national park’ plan, urging them: ‘Take your dogs and family. Make noise, claim your land.’

And with divisions becoming further inflamed, so the cycle of hate continues.

Still, when the MoS visited Dovedale last week everyone appeared to be rubbing along just fine. What was undeniable though was that it was overcrowded, uncomfortably so, with not even grey skies and frequent downpours keeping the day-trippers away. The car park was jammed, so too the overspill.

‘You think this is bad now, but I was here in the heatwave when it was bedlam,’ says Keith Gould, 64, a former warehouseman from Birmingham, visiting with his wife Julie. ‘We wanted to come back when it was cooler.

‘Too many families stay by the stepping stones where they spend the day cooking and eating and don’t venture into the hills. If everyone spread out it wouldn’t appear so rammed.’

As we talk, we pass a recently erected National Trust sign appearing to reflect the concerns of recent weeks. It warns: ‘No BBQs, No fires, No cooking, No shisha pipes, No gas stoves... This is a nature reserve, thank you for helping us look after it.’

At the stepping stones at a bend in the river, at the foot of Thorpe Cloud, a large flat-topped hill, queues of 20 to 30 people form on each side. People seem to cross ten at a time before the other side gets a turn. Some take dogs. Others struggle with pushchairs. One woman, dressed as if for a wedding, tentatively moved from stone to stone in kitten-heel slingback shoes and a long, elegant dress.

Inevitably things get fractious. ‘For the love of God, why does everyone have to stop in the middle of the river to have their pictures taken?’ exclaims one man queuing. ‘We’ll be here all day.’ Others mutter in agreement. This is how fights start, but thankfully the moment passes.

An angler among the day-trippers tells me that it’s the perfect spot for trout fishing. It’s hard to imagine anyone catching much these days. The noise around the stepping stones is deafening.

As we wait to cross, children play with inflatable dinghies and paddle boards.

Many are critical, meanwhile, of the National Trust’s role in what they see as the area’s decline. The Trust, incidentally, charges £6 for the car park. And it costs 50p to use the loo.

‘I hope the NT takes heed of the negative reviews because this beautiful landscape is being progressively ruined. We visited today and were shocked by how eye- wateringly overcrowded it was,’ wrote a woman on Tripadvisor last month. She went on to call for a ban on picnics ‘as many families were clearly taking the mick’, and condemned the whole atmosphere as one of ‘unmanaged chaos’.

And then there were the toilets. ‘I paid the obligatory 50p to use the public toilet but gave up before I’d even gone because they looked like something out of the Third World... Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this. It’s a shame as it could be a breathtaking experience. Instead, I just felt my blood boiling.’

The National Trust told the MoS that it had reported to the police the presence of far-Right activists at Dovedale, but recognised the problems that high visitor numbers bring.

‘Our rangers, welcome team and volunteers work hard to care for Dovedale, doing regular litter picks and talking to visitors about ways to enjoy the space responsibly,’ a spokesman said.

‘We encourage everyone to take their litter away with them.’

But such toothless advice will satisfy few visitors to Dovedale who despair at the beauty spot’s decline.