Chesters by the River has a large veranda that hangs out over the River Brathay, and on a dry day it is one of the busiest places to sit in the central Lake District. It began as a small tea room and grew into a large café and bakery, with fresh-baked goods that are mostly vegan-friendly, coffee, and light meals. The name comes from a bull terrier called Chester, who according to the café "ruled the roost" at the nearby Drunken Duck Inn. The same family runs both.
That is the busy end of Skelwith Bridge, which is otherwise a hamlet rather than a village. It sits where the Great Langdale and Little Langdale valleys meet the Ambleside road, two miles from Ambleside and a mile and a half from Elterwater. There is no church here — the nearest are at Ambleside or Chapel Stile — and no railway.
The river is the thing to follow. The Brathay comes down from Langdale, through Elterwater lake, and just above the hamlet it drops over Skelwith Force, a waterfall that is at its most dramatic after rain. You reach it on a short walk through the slate works, which is worth doing for the slate works as much as the waterfall.
The slate is green Lakeland slate — volcanic ash, some 450 million years old — and it has been quarried here at the Skelwith Bridge quarry and at the Elterwater Quarry a little down the valley for a long time. The working buildings stand along the path to the falls, so the walk to a natural spectacle takes you past an industrial one first.
The other pub is the Talbot Bar at the Skelwith Bridge Hotel, a traditional inn that has long been the hamlet's main place to stay and drink.
The walking is the main reason to be here. The Ambleside-to-Elterwater route is a classic three-mile valley walk that comes through Skelwith Bridge, flat and easy, following the Brathay the whole way. The Cumbria Way passes through too, on its long run from Ulverston to Carlisle, so on any given day some of the people at Chesters have walked a fair distance to get there and some are about to.
You will want a car. The A593 brings you in from Ambleside; from there the B5343 heads into Great Langdale, or you turn south for Little Langdale. There is no regular bus. The seasonal 516, the Langdale Rambler, stops at Skelwith Bridge when it runs.
From Skelwith Force the Brathay carries on, through the rest of the Lakes, eventually joining the River Leven at Newby Bridge. The waterfall is loud after rain and nearly silent in a dry spell, and the veranda at Chesters fills up either way.
