Posted by Ed Kiser on March 31, 2011 at 10:11:38 user Kisered.
In Ransome's stories, "The Lake" is never really identified as having any specific name. His imaginary "lake" is a composite of Lake Coniston and Windemere in the Lake District. These are in reality two long narrow lakes, somewhat parallel to each other. Certain features of each lake were appropriated to be placed in Ransome's "The Lake" where we came to visit with our childhood friends.
There is however one reference to the another lake besides "The Lake" in that in Swallowdale, as they were preparing to set out on their hike overland to the valley of the Amazon, a flock of swans flew over, heading towards the setting sun (westwards) and John observed that "there is another lake over there" that perhaps the swans, from their height, could see, although they could not see any other lake from their own position. Two chapters later, they did get a glimpse of water far off to the west, but not able to observe how large it was. Perhaps it was that other lake the swans were heading for, or perhsps, it was just another Tarn somewhere to the west.
But there was another lake to the west in Ransome's imaginary world, so this matches the reality geography of Coniston being to the west of Windemere.