Posted by RichardG on December 16, 2001 at 23:16:47 from 217.32.143.143:
In Reply to: Re: AR's Lake District - should one take a small boy there? posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on December 09, 2001 at 12:43:44:
A couple of years ago I took my eight-year-old son to the Lakes for a weekend, staying in Ambleside. We hired an electric boat (in a flat calm - no chance of a sail) on Coniston and landed in the secret harbour on Peel Island, which we had all to ourselves while we explored. We then rowed across to the landing below Bank Ground (Holly Howe).
We also rowed around the northern end of Windermere, past one candidate for Darien, and looked for the site of the North Pole. We visited the Windermere Steam Boat Museum and saw "Amazon", "Scarab", and Captain Flint's Houseboat, complete with (non-talking) parrot. And we walked around the shore of Rio Bay and looked across at Long Island.
He loved it - it has given him a mental image of the real places as he reads the books, and he also thoroughly enjoyed replaying his video of the S&A film and spotting the places he had been to.
F&M disease stopped us from going up in 2001 to look for Swallowdale, or to climb Kanchenjunga - maybe we will make it next year.
As long as your small boy understands that the places are not exactly like they are in the book, and that part of the fun is spotting where some of them might be, he will have a great time in the Lakes !