Rose cottage

When Dan and I went out for a drive on Thursday, we headed west out of Kendal towards Lake Windermere. I'd hoped to go right the way across but we didn't have enough time and ended up cutting down through Row and Low to Levens, and thence home.

Today we had loads more time so we were able to stay on the road all the way to the lake, looking down on it from Fell Foot Brow, which is where I took this photo. On the way across we passed through Bowland Bridge, which has some nostalgic significance for me.

When we returned from Hong Kong, which is where I fell in love with Arthur Ransome's books, we used to come to the Lake District every Easter. One year, we stayed in Bowland Bridge, specifically in Rose Cottage (see Extra).  I would spend a lot of time trying to 'map' the real Lake District back onto the 'Swallows and Amazons' books. For example, I thought the river in the main photo was the one by which one reached the Blackett's house. 

It was only years later that I learned that the Lake District of Ransome's books was a composite of various places but that has never diminished my love of the lakes.

As a footnote, I am friends with Andrea Gibb who wrote the script for the 2016 film of 'Swallows and Amazons'. Quite apart from being such a lovely person - and first class drinking buddy - she's also a brilliant writer and I can never quite get over what an amazing job she did of capturing the essence on the book in the film. It chimed perfectly with the way I always saw it in my head.

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Reading: 'A Treachery Of Spies' by Manda Scott