The Little Shop

You've probably seen the photos - that impossibly narrow shop wedged between two buildings in Carnforth like someone forgot to measure before building the houses either side. The Little Shop is exactly what it claims: tiny. Walking past it first time, you might miss it altogether, which rather seems to be the point.

It's a working sweet shop, proper old-school, with barely room to swing a bag of liquorice allsorts. The appeal isn't really the sweets themselves, though they do stock the usual suspects. It's the fact you're standing in something genuinely unusual, a gap in the high street that's been commercialised without being ruined. For kids, it's brilliant - that novelty of squeezing into a space barely wider than a doorframe. Adults find it amusing enough for a quick photo, though you'll want to get in, browse, and get out. It's not a 20-minute destination.

Carnforth's near enough to make this a passing curiosity rather than a pilgrimage. If you're staying at one of the caravan parks scattered round here - Meathop Fell or Holgates are closest - it's worth a wander into town anyway. The real appeal? Proof that not everything needs to be expanded, franchised, or made bigger. Sometimes small is genuinely interesting. Free to look around, obviously, though you might buy something out of sheer principle.