Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on December 05, 2004 at 10:37:38 from 217.137.106.32 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: owner gave permission to camp here? posted by Ed Kiser on December 05, 2004 at 05:41:35:
There was a suggestion in an early Mixed Moss that the Blackett/Turner family could well have been major landowners in the area. It seems hard to explain otherwise how Captain Flint was able to open a mine on High Topps without having the mineral rights, or even how they were able to camp in PP against the clearly expressed wishes of Mrs Tyson.
I don't think the other books are so hard to explain:-
SA - Ransome himself camped on the Island. It wasn't any use to anybody, there were very few tourists in those days, the local farmers - Jackson and Dixon weren't worried, so who else would be?
SD - Mrs Walker went to see the Swainsons. AR didn't need to go into detail about what was said, but she naturally would have asked for permission to camp there. Ditto with the man from the Kraal in SW
WH - The igloo was probably on the Jackson's land. I'm sure, knowing Lakeland farmers, that Mr Jackson knew what was happening - he was probably specifically told what they wanted to do, but I doubt whether he would have been very worried anyway.
PM - The Dog's Home and the surrounding wood were surely Beckfoot land.
In other books written about that time there seems to have been little problem experienced by children camping, or even getting permission from farmers to sleep in barns. Indeed if the farmer objects he usually turns out to be a villain with a dark secret! And there are plenty of climbing books which tell how the author, in some cases even from darkest Glasgow, got permission to camp or sleep in farm buildings as a metter of course. When it was only a few people trying to do this farmers presumably didn't usually worry. Only with the explosion of leisure, paradoxically brought about in part by AR himself, has everything tightened up.