Posted by Tom Bolton on July 10, 2002 at 18:14:54 from 80.40.42.78 user peel.
Hi
I am Tom Bolton and my partner is Beverley Anderson. We live in Wallasey,
Wirral, and Merseyside. We are voluntary respite foster carers.
A couple of years ago we saw and video recorded a film made in 1974 called
'Swallows and Amazons'.
Watching the film brought back memories of my childhood when I first read
the 'Swallows and Amazons' book by Arthur Ransome and then with my friends
acted out and imagined that we were the kiddies in the adventure.
Anyway getting back to the present, we showed this film to some children
that we have been fostering for short breaks, weekends and school holidays, over the last few years. These and other children that we foster became so enthralled by the film, that every time they came to us for respite they begged us to show them
the film again and again and then for the next few days, whilst they stayed with us they assumed the names and characters of John, Susan, Titty and Roger-the Swallows and some of the children became Peggy and Nancy the Amazons.
Now we have other children coming to us and it’s always the same, the magic of 'Swallows and Amazons' intrigues and fascinates the children so much that the same things happen over and over again.
We always have to join in. I Tom am always nominated by the children to be Captain Flint; Beverley is Man Friday.
This wonderful fantasy has now spread to any and all the children that come to us for short respites. It seems as if Arthur Ransome understood just how to spark the imagination of children and big children-adults as well.
We began to realise that the more information we have the more real we can
make things for the children. Soon we decided to do a little research into
the adventures of Swallows and Amazons. We bought a book by Roger Wardale
about Swallows and Amazons. A couple of weeks we booked and stayed a few
days in Cumbria.
On Thursday 20th June 2002 we duly arrived in the Lake District for a 3 nights visit.
We stayed at Anne Tyson’s Cottage in Hawkeshead so that we could visit both
Coniston and Windermere. We visited the boat museum on Windermere and saw the
two sailing dinghies and Captain Flints boat reputed to be the ones that Ransome used with a family of children who’s names and to some extent characters he wrote the story around.
When driving down the East Bank of Coniston we saw Peel Island
and about a mile further on we came to an Adventure Water Park 'Lakeland
Adventure Centre'. We told the people at the reception of our interest in
Swallows and Amazons. One of them was also really a fan of the adventures.
On the Friday morning, just after England were knocked out of the World Cup,
we received a phone call at our B & B from Annie the administrator tutor at
the Water Park. She invited us back to the Park. We were loaned a canoe
and safety gear to wear so that we could paddle out and visit Peel Island.
It was a cloudy and overcast day with some drizzle; but our spirits were
high. It took us about 25 minutes to paddle out to Peel Island in our canoe.
We found the secret harbour and lined up with the tree, just as the Swallows did and glided in up onto the little gravel beach a perfect landing. We noticed that the leading light tree had a cross-marked on it, obviously from long ago as the bark had grown an edging around the mark.
The rain stopped, the wind dropped, and the weather brightened a little. We
found the 'Swallows camp site, with the fire surround stones and old cold
burnt embers from long ago, still there. We felt as if we had gone through a time warp back to the summer of 1929.
Bev soon identified a tree that she thought might be the original lighthouse tree. We walked down a steep path and found the landing place and the little gritty beach were the Swallows did their swimming and first landed in their sailing dingy ‘The Swallow’.
We climbed up onto the higher ground overlooking the secret harbour and the
rocky promontories on both sides of it. We took photos and we got a lovely photo of Titty’s Rock. We then settled down and had a picnic. We could look across the lake and in the distance see the mountain Coniston Old Man.
I had a swim in the Secret Harbour and a paddle at the landing site. The
water in the lake was cool but refreshing but higher than in some of the pictures and photos we have seen of Peel, in Roger Wardale's book 'In Search of Swallows and Amazons'.
After a couple of hours on the Island we climbed back in our canoe just as it began to rain. We felt sad as we said goodbye to this wonderful little Island lying alone in the Lake. We paddled back to the water park and thanked those wonderfully kind people for the loan of the canoe.
The next day Saturday June 22nd we took a drive around Windermere. We headed south along the Western bank of the lake and saw Silver Holme that we believe is
Cormorant Island. The trees are growing once more there as the Cormorants
have now moved onto Lady Holme just off Bowness and the trees there are now
becoming bare.
We then went around the southern end of Windermere and around the Eastern
side heading north. We were looking for Blake Holme Island another Island that Arthur Ransome mentioned when questioned about Wild Cat Island. We came to an
exclusive caravan park called Hill of Oaks and Blakeholme Caravan Estate. It
was private but we drove in and down to the edge of the lake. There in front
of us was Blake Holme Island. We understand that Ransome said that this was
part of the story but that Peel Island on Coniston had a better harbour, so
it seems he used bits of each as the Island in the book.
We then went up to Bowness and took a boat trip around the Windermere
Islands and passed close to Ramp Holme an Island in Windermere (we were
told) it was used as one of the Islands together with Peel in the delightful little movie of Swallows and Amazons that we have a copy of.
We then went to the Museum in Kendal and saw the Arthur Ransome Room, it was
very interesting.
We thought we would share this with you and probably later in the year join
your society as it is half way through your financial year and we would only
get 3 months for our remittance. We are not sure how we can get a family
membership because as respite foster carers the children who come to us are
not always the same group. Maybe you can advise us on this?
We have photos of us on Peel - Wildcat Island that we took on that Friday. We will willingly send them as e-mail attachments for anyone who has not been to Peel and would like to see some pictures of the real Wildcat Island.
Regards
Tom Bolton and Beverley Anderson