Ahoy Swallows and Amazons!
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
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13
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Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Coniston, United Kingdom
Sunday, August 5, 2007
When I was a boy part of each summer was spent at my grandparents' farm outside of Washington. They had a glass-fronted cabinet full of the books their kids (including my mother) read when they were young. Since my grandfather was educated in part at Oxford, the selections were heavy on British children's literature. My favorites were the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome, written in the 1930s. The books take place in a fictional lake based in part on Coniston Water and in part on nearby Windermere. We'll be spending two weeks in Coniston village, near the north end of the lake.
An interesting piece of Arthur Ransome trivia -- he met his second wife Evgenia while a foreign correspondent in Russia in the early 1920s. She was Trotsky's secretary!
