On Saturday, following a fairly frenetic week, we decided a gentle day mooching around the Rusland Valley would be perfect. There are so many places connected with Arthur Ransome and I wanted to explore and discover some of them.
We started the day with lunch at Gillam's in Ulverston, their creamed mushrooms on toast (vegan!) are absolutely delicious. We did a spot of shopping and then headed off to Rusland.
Our first destination was St Paul's Church in Rusland where Arthur Ransome and his wife, Evgenia, are buried. Saturday was a beautiful early spring day, and the churchyard was full of daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses. The grave is in a peaceful corner, Ransome found the churchyard one of the most peaceful places on Earth, and asked if he could be buried there under a particular tree, with the sound of the wind in the pine needles.
Our next stop on our Ransome inspired tour was a house which the Ransomes rented in the summer of 1951: Ealinghearth Cottage. Our next desination is only a short distance from Ealinghearth Cottage and another Ransome home: Hill Top, which Ransome bought in 1960 and where he lived until his death in 1967. At Hill Top Ransome mostly worked on his fishing books. He didn't write any of his Swallows and Amazons novels here. Both houses are set in beautiful countryside and are peaceful and tranquil.
There are more houses where the Ransomes lived, but we decided we would come back another day to seek these out. There are also lots of other literary connections in this beautiful and quiet valley. So much to explore soon.
We pottered through the Rusland Valley and drove up to Gummer's Howe where we enjoyed the view of Lake Windermere. The views are spectacular, and for the first time I realised how similar this view is to the endpapers of Ransome's Swallows and Amazons.
Our final destination was St Anthony's Church on Cartmel Fell. This is a pre-Reformation church described by Mrs Humphry Ward in Helbeck of Bannisdale:
Above the moth-eaten table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that breathed the very secreta of the old faith - a window of radiant fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange, uncomprehended things... For here....there stood a golden St Anthony, a virginal St Margaret....in the very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed to receive the Holy Oil - so pale, so eager still after all these centuries.
