Posted by Peter Ceresole on May 15, 2013 at 13:02:46 user PeterC.
In Reply to: In Ransome country posted by Peter Ceresole on May 15, 2013 at 11:58:51:
Seeing as I was havering on about thinking about the way things were when AR was producing the books, there's a nice thing that Google Street View has made possible.
Look, I'm really sorry if I'm wasting your bytes, but there's so much you can do with Street View- and I'm sure almost everybody will have done this already but:
Go to "Pin Mill", zoom in to the hard at the end of the lane and you're at the Butt and Oyster. Look right, and there's Alma Cottage, pink and large as life. Look left and there's the boatbuilder's hut as illustrated by AR on WD p.26- maybe a tad bigger now. But the same one.
Go to "Oxenholme station" ('Strickland Junction' in real life), go half way down the road on the Western side of the station and look half right; there's a Virgin Pendolino stopped at the platform and just behind it, large as life and twice as solid, is the high brick wall behind the steam engine in 'Letting Fly' PP, JC 1948 p.17.
And continuing with PP, you can go to Windermere itself, find the station and from there follow Rattletrap's progress driven by Molly Blackett with Titty and Roger; just follow your nose left out of the station and down the hill, imagining you're passing Col Jolys coming up the other way and jerking as you change gear. Take the main road at each fork till you arrive (some way down the road) at Bowness, and the lake appears between the houses. The street doesn't look as though it will have changed that much since AR wrote that splendid passage, and when you reach the lake piers look back across them and see, past a new white building called 'The Old England', the hotels, exactly as they were in the picture of AR sailing in front of them, in Christine Hardyment's smashing 'The World of Arthur Ransome' p.78. The roof line is absolutely distinctive; he's there.
Incidentally, opposite that picture in the book, there's a photo of AR writing in his converted barn, illuminated through the window I mentioned in the previous posting about Low Ludderburn, through which you can look, using Google Street View.
I'm just a child, really, but I love this stuff.