It’ll all end in Beers

If this place feels secluded now, it wasn’t always so. The valley was once the busy intersection for many of the historic tracks in the area. Ancient packhorse ways fed into Little Langdale from every point on the compass. We trace a path down to the valley floor and detour slightly to visit a reminder of those old days. The picturesque Slater Bridge is a sturdy packhorse crossing that still spans the River Brathay. Striding over its wonky, worn back we climb up to a network of inter-linked ex-slate quarries now owned by the National Trust and open to the public. Following a signpost at the tunnel entrance, we stoop and walk into darkness, emerging in an enormous main chamber known as Cathedral Cave, lit by two ‘window’ holes off the main quarry.

Little Langdale’s only pub is The Three Shires Inn, but it is a goody. Built in the nineteenth century with local slate, it gets its moniker from the fact that it is only two miles from where the boundaries of the old counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire used to meet. We arrive just in time to catch lunch, washing down a well-earned Ploughman’s with glasses of Goodhew’s Dry Stout from Barnsgate Brewery in Ambleside. Its dark toffee and liquorice tones are a perfect complement to the local cheese, pickles, ham and pork pie.

His pride is understandable. For many years the notion of selling beer that had been created just a few miles away would have been unthinkable in a pub like this. Now craft ale and its potential for myriad flavours and subtleties is a booming industry with new microbreweries opening every week. And as with a wine and its particular ‘terroir’, counties, towns and villages all over Britain are brewing up ranges to reflect their region, giving places and even pubs their own intriguing personality and flavour again.

Re-filling our water bottles at the bar, we trek from the Three Shires north for a mile and a half, skirting the lower flanks of Lingmoor Fell to drop down into Great Langdale. Through a fairytale-like forest of sculptural trees, where old logs are decorated with coins hammered into every crack, we follow a trail that runs between collapsing, moss-hanging walls into an oddly industrial setting: the eerie quiet of another slate quarry. This one half-resembles a ghost town from the Wild West. Huge, domed mountains with a dusting of snow frame the slumped telegraph poles and rusting machinery. At the bottom, Great Langdale Beck surges in a twisting tumble of clear water. We cross to find ourselves suddenly – and happily – in a manicured beer garden.

Wainwrights’ Inn at the village of Chapel Stile is the sort of place any weary-legged walker dreams of finding. Even on a fair-weather day like ours, the combination of old bar, flag floors, fires, settles and a menu of house-smoked meats is pretty irresistible. So too its range of beers. Seated by a window with views of the trail we just bagged behind us, we try out the freshly pulled ales.

Between us, there are pints of the incredible Loweswater Gold – a golden ale made in Hawkshead using German lager hops – and a robust best bitter called Hardknott Continuum from Hardknott Brewery in Millom. All are sunk quickly, partly because they are delicious and partly because on any pub-crawl, it never pays to get too comfy.

As we rise and pick up packs again, it’s clear that energies are flagging a tad. No one is admitting it, but on the way out I catch all four of us massaging creaking muscles with a grimace. Fortunately the hop to the penultimate pub involves less than a mile of gentle riverside rambling.

We breeze downstream along the beautiful beck-side footpath to the pretty village of Elterwater. At its centre, above a little green, the white-painted Britannia Inn buzzes with atmosphere, inside and out.

If it has changed in the last fifty years, it doesn’t show. The Britannia is an old-school Lakes boozer by any definition and all the more wonderful for it. Think hay bale-thick walls and wonky rooms with wooden pews and live fires. And in every nook and cranny, customers – the sure sign of a brilliant watering hole. Stepping into the taproom, I’m drawn towards the two beers brewed for the pub by Coniston Brewery: Britannia Inn Gold and Britannia Inn Special. 

“You look like a Gold man to me.” The barman says, hand poised on the pump. “Am I right?”

Turns out he must be clairvoyant. The honey-coloured brew is cool, hoppy, and exactly what I need. It’s a tough job to motivate everyone back to their feet again. There are even a few unhelpful shouts from the barman suggesting we relax and order a taxi. But a couple of chocolate bars and talk of a hearty fish pie for dinner at the Ambleside Salutation Hotel & Spa, WorldHotels Distinctive, provide the requisite boost.

From the Britannia we pick up the Cumbria Way heading east. With the Langdale Pikes behind and Elterwater to our right, it’s absolutely breath-taking stuff and we meander all the way along the shore path to Skelwith Force, the waterfall we’d bypassed earlier. ‘Force’ is the right word for it. As the water leaves the calm of the lake it is channelled into a torrent of white that roars and rebounds through the surrounding trees. With evening approaching, the tentative suggestion of revisiting The Talbot Bar in Skelwith Bridge doesn’t really get off the ground and we tramp up through Neaum Crag, back onto Loughrigg Fell.

“In the last glow of the setting sun, everything is golden; the fields and fells washed with light.”

Maybe it’s all the beer, but the last leg feels like a slog and a half and it requires plenty of water and snacks to keep the pace decent. Eventually though we are elevated in every sense, wandering down to Ambleside through the gathering dusk. I doubt the town has ever looked as good to anyone. In the last glow of the setting sun, everything is golden; the fields and fells washed with light.

We shed our boots and backpacks at the door of the Ambleside Salutation Hotel & Spa, WorldHotels Distinctive, and drift into the bar on numb legs. The final pint awaiting us is Hawkshead Bitter, a CAMRA award-winner known in these parts as “the hiker’s favourite” and we soon understand why. Its citrus and hoppy qualities are easy to drink, crisp and refreshing. We take seats with views out over the town and the fells beyond, feeling the buzz of accomplishment tingling through our bodies.

No one speaks; there is no need. The little clink of raised glasses and a silent, nodded ‘cheers’ says it all. It says nearly eleven miles done; six hundred metres of ascent and some of the most beautiful landscapes and beers you can find in Britain.

Now that’s what I call a round.

Where it all happened: Ambleside Salutation Hotel & Spa, WorldHotels Distinctive – A classic and luxurious Lakeland hotel in seventeenth-century building surrounded by fells with pool, spa and gym. We’d particularly recommend you try their ramblers leg massage to soothe wearied legs!

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