Posted by RichardG on January 19, 2005 at 16:59:57 from 212.137.34.25 user RichardG.
In Reply to: Re: What is your favourite Ransome quotation? - Regional Preferences posted by Owen Roberts on January 19, 2005 at 14:49:19:
As a child reading the books in the 1960s, I insisted that we should take a family holiday in the Lakes - even though my powers of persuasion only led to a long weekend, and the only time we got onto the water involved taking a native canoe out from Lakeside at the southern end of Windermere, I felt very close to the books and adored the area.
Although I did suggest a visit to the Broads as well, I didn't press the point anything like as strongly (and in fact finally visited Horning and Wroxham only last year), and I don't think I ever pushed for a visit to Pin Mill or the Walton Backwaters - the flat land and mud somehow didn't have the appeal of the mountains. The Western Isles were never seriously considered (partly due to the vagueness of the locations).
When reading the books to my son in recent years, when asked which one he wanted to hear next after SD, he wanted to stay in the Lakes, so we went straight to WH, then PP and PM.
The other seven are good in their different ways, but I wonder if the magic would have caught on quite so much without the five Lakes books, which for me are the essence of AR and the ones that appealed most of all. How much the pleasure was increased by the poring over the Ordnance Survey, identifying Rio, Kanchenjunga and Wild Cat Island and making guesses on some of the other places for myself I'm not sure, but it certainly helped.