Posted by Bob on June 20, 2004 at 14:24:50 from 62.252.96.6 user bj.
As a child I was given the books to read - and I eagerly anticipated the next one in the Penguin/Puffin series appearing - then, at a certain age (not sure which) the books got put aside and forgotton until last year. I was moving various items up from my parents house in London and brought the entire series with me - reasoning that I'd enjoyed them so much as a child I thought mine might like them too.
They never got them - or rather they got placed in my 'study' (aka box-room) and I started re-reading them! They transported me back to my own childhood very quickly and it set me wondering about life choices and situations and the extent to which these books had influenced me.
I now live in Yorkshire - not far from the Lakes - yet I never visited them until last September! I always argued that I moved to Yorkshire some 20 years ago so as to be near the Yorkshire Dales - for walking and caving/pot-holing - which I'd just taken up. I'd been down quite a few caves in the Mendip Hills and some of the old stone mines there and was quite fascinated by everything underground. Having re-read the Lakes books it set me thinking - for as a child I'd badgered my parents to take me to Gunnislake in Devon (we spent every summer on the south Devon coast) to see the old copper mines and go 'prospecting'. I tried canoeing (but failed!) and spent as much time as possible either near the estuary or on Dartmoor - as close as one could get to the lakes and fells of S&A country. From being ten years old (or so) I was fascinated by rocks, minerals, metals, water, codes - some of the elements in the books in other words - not that I realised that at the time! In retrospect I suspect my take-up of caving and the move to Yorkshire from London was really driven by an unconscious desire to be close to the Lakes and the books - or put another way, these books determined the course of my life. An odd feeling...
Last September myself and my wife (who's never read the books) stayed in an unspoilt camp site (Low Wray) on the banks of Windermere - with the tent no more than 10 feet from the water. I probably would never have chosen the Lakes for a short break (for the first time) without re-reading S&A. We watched the sun rise over Windermere in the morning, drank wine cooled in the lake all day whilist watching the swans and ducks, and saw the sun set over the lake - idylic! It's prompted me to learn how to sail and a large family dinghy (probably wooden and kit built) is on the purchase list for the future - for if nothing else I really want to walk on Wild Cat Island - and take the children!
I guess there's no answer to this - this post is really a public appreciation of the S&A books - with a certain sentimentality and wistfulness of times when life was simpler (or maybe so we like to think?) - or do we all do that as adults when looking back? One things for sure - I can't put these books down and another short break in the Lakes is beckoning!