[1] Several villages which the river passes through are named after it: as well as Piddletrenthide there are Piddlehinton, Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turnerspuddle.

Local legend tells that the Victorians changed the spelling to 'Puddle', due to 'piddle' being a slang term for 'urine'[1] (although Puddletown was still called Piddletown into the 1950s), but see for instance the John Speed map of the county from 1610[2] which has the name 'Puddletown'.

In its upper reaches, the Piddle is a chalk stream flowing south through a steep valley cut into the dip slope of the downland,[3] which is dominated by an agricultural landscape of calcareous grassland pasture and arable fields.

At Puddletown, 6 miles (9.7 km) south of the source, the chalk dips below clay and alluvial sand and gravel geology with a flatter landscape of water-meadows.

The Piddle Valley was the subject of Ogden Nash's poem Paradise For Sale, published in the New Yorker in 1959.