Posted by Duncan on January 28, 2003 at 22:49:01 from 205.188.209.46 user Duncan.
In Reply to: Re: Camping on Peel and Blakeholme. posted by andy bolger on January 28, 2003 at 20:41:34:
You can get out to Peel Island easily enough from the shore as well. On a decent day you quite often see kids sitting on the big shelf of rock at the 'harbour end' who've paddled/swum-a-bit out to it.
Makes me wonder, actually. In S&A John swam around the island and talked about swimming to the shore being 'even further'. This is not the case with Peel or Blakeholme - not even nearly! Indeed you could almost jump from Blakeholme to the shore, at the south end. From Darien, the Swallows thought Wild Cat was in the middle of the lake and only spotted it was further to one side once they were out on the water.
Ramp Holme, on the other hand, is rather better situated from that point of view (although that particular bit of S&A Geography is messed up a bit by sailors often losing wind in the 'channel' between Wild Cat and the shore which suggests something closer to the Blakeholme/Peel Island position).
I've a few questions like this. In S&A the foot of the lake seems to be a lot further away than it does in Swallowdale. In S&A they sail south from the island where the lake broadens and then narrows again and they could see a cloud of steam in the far distance where there was another steamer pier (presumably Lakeside). There never seems to be any suggestion that there is less Antarctic than Arctic. Wild Cat seems to be far closer to Rio than to this other steamer pier they never visit. And yet in Swallowdale you can hear people cheering at the foot of the lake from Swallowdale. Okay so Swallowdale is on the right side of the lake and due about South West from Wild Cat, but this still suggests it's closer to the foot of the lake than you'd imagine.
I think the lake (or at least its environs) becomes a lot more Coniston-like in Swallowdale than it was in S&A.
We do actually have it suggested that Holly Howe is 'about a mile' south of Rio and Wild Cat Island is 'about a mile' south of Holly Howe. And indeed that Beckfoot is 'about a mile' north of the last of the Rio islands north. Now I think we can safely make those distances pretty approximate and perhaps even reduce them (remembering children can think they've walked 'miles' after really quite short distances) but Blakeholme is six or seven miles south of 'Rio'.
I know I'm falling into a silly trap of forgeting that the geography within the books is very different from that on the ground but I have always been fascinated by making comparisons. It was through doing so (and mostly through studying the Eskimo Settlements map in Winter Holiday and comparing it with the Ordnance Survey, taking Rio as Bowness as a given) that years and years ago now I decided Ramp Holme was Wild Cat. Later on I heard that AR referred to Blakeholme and the harbour - and other features - are so clearly there on Peel Island. Ramp Holme is slightly wrongly alligned, but if you give it a tweak from the point of view of alignment it has a landing place, camp, a higher area with a tall pine (there are two pines but these things do change - there are about six pines on Blakeholme and the tallest is at the southern end!) the side opposite the landing place is rocky with no bay or beech for a landing place and the end is rocky with a rocky promontory (far too small) and with rocks going out a long way. There is no harbour, of course. It is a little too close to 'Rio' although not by much and far better situated from that point of view than the other two! It is about the right distance from the western shore of Windermere and the views both north and south seem reasonably 'accurate'.
I know the other islands have much to recommend them as Wild Cat - particularly those incredible features on Peel island - but I still have to put my hand up for Ramp Holme (an island I sailed to from 'Holly Howe Bay' - the bay by Bowness rectory where there's a public slipway now).
And just for information, Ramp Holme is NT property but there are no signs about camping. I have seen people anchor near there, sleep onboard their yacht but have the kids on the island during the days. I've never seen anybody camping there, but it does seem too good a camp to waste.
Duncan