Posted by Robert Dilley on January 27, 2005 at 23:41:45 from 216.211.49.131 user rdilley.
In Reply to: Re: What is your favourite Ransome illustration ? posted by Adam Quinan on January 26, 2005 at 12:22:51:
The Austria story? A few years ago a touring busload of geography students from the University of Salzburg spent a couple of nights in Thunder Bay, and I guided them around the day they were here. While at a viewpoint overlooking the lake (Superior -- or more precisely the Thunder Bay part of it) one of the Austrians, who had already been driven up from the eastern end of the lake, 450 miles away, asked me "Just how big is this lake, anyway?" "Put it this way," I replied, "You could drop your entire country into it, and there would still be water around the edges." (Admittedly, the higher peaks would stick up.)
My daughters, who were born and grew up on the shore of Superior, have a rather blase attitide towards the English lakes. When we were by Windermere a local was extolling it as England's largest lake. "Back home," came the reply from my eldest "We have bigger lakes than that they haven't got round to naming yet."
Having said which: while Canada had more than its fair share of huge lakes and -- especially in the Rockies -- many visually spectacular lakes; there isn't anywhere in the world that I have been to that compares in its total beauty to the Lake District. Size isn't everything (as has been said in other contexts.)
As for weather, I join the side saying go in May rather than August. I don't have rainfall figures to hand (they're in my office, and I am at home) but I know May is one of the driest months; August one of the wettest. However, "driest" is comparative. As others have pointed out, rain -- seemingly incessant rain -- can come at any time. It is just more likely to come in August than in May.
There is an old Andy Capp cartoon I bitterly regret not keeping a copy of. Friend says "Andy, we're going to the Lake District for our holidays. You were there last year. Does it rain as often as they say?" "No," comes the reply. "We were there two weeks, and it only rained twice." (Friend breaks into a broad grin.) "That's right," continues Andy, "First time for three days and second time for four days." (Friend loses grin.)
If anyone has a copy of that cartoon (and I have looked in every collection I can find over here) I would be most grateful for a copy -- especially as I am preparing a paper to give in June at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers on weather in AR's Lake District Novels.