Posted by Robert Dilley on June 07, 2005 at 05:58:43 from 216.211.1.41 user rdilley.
In Reply to: Re: Another Swallowdale? posted by AlanGardner on June 06, 2005 at 18:58:06:
My family and I first followed Roger Wardale's careful directions looking for Swallowdale above Consiton Water. The approach up the beck from "Horseshoe Cove" was authentic, but nothing above (and we hunted extensively over the moor) looked even vaguely like our concept of Swallowdale.
Miterdale Head (which we investigated following a meeting at Oxford with Christina Hardyment and on her recommendation) immediately sprang to life from the book. It is invisible until you are almost on top of it; it has a fine waterfall, a flat bottom traversed by a stream. The approach is all wrong, so -- as in so much of AR's landscapes -- we concluded that he took the initial approach and the scramble up the fall from his early experiences exploring around the foot of Coniston, and added the superb amphitheatre (to use Wainwright's phrase) of Miterdale Head. Certainly my children expressed a keen interest in camping there!
Although Miterdale is somewhat removed from AR's usual haunts around the Coniston Fells, it was not unknown for him to borrow from further afield -- witness his modelling of Darien on Friar's Crag, Derwentwater.
On a different topic, last Thursday (June 2 -- coincidentally my 26th wedding anniversary) I read a paper at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers entitled "Weather as a Literary Device: the Lake District Novels of Arthur Ransome". A disappointingly small audience (my paper was scheduled in a small and remote room) was pleasingly enthusiastic, and there was some gratifyingly intense discussion with some useful suggestions. I did not, unfortunately, have time to proselytise on behalf of TARS.
I plan to write my paper for publication in an academic Geography journal, but hope to be able to put at least a brief synopsis in MM or some other TARS publication.