Cross the River Brathay at Little Langdale on Slater’s Bridge, a 17th-century packhorse bridge built of slate, with one slim arch and a run of flat slabs resting on a boulder midstream. Miners from the Tilberthwaite fells probably built it as a short cut to work. The hamlet is a scatter of farms, many owned by the National Trust, round the Three Shires Inn of 1872, named after the stone on Wrynose Pass where Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire met. In the old slate quarries, Cathedral Cave is a chamber 40 feet high around one big rock pillar. Blea Tarn is up the lane towards Great Langdale, and Colwith Force tumbles down the Brathay at the valley’s lower end.
