Back from the Lake District: Swallows & Amazons Forever!

At the end of my last post before going over to England's Lake District, I posted a Poetry Friday challenge--why does the poem Casabianca make me think of the Lake District? The Answer: because it is featured in Swallowdale, by Arthur Ransom.

Swallowdale is the second of books Ransom wrote about the wonderful holidays of a group of English children in the Lake District; the first is Swallows and Amazons. They had the freedom of a lake and its surrounding mountains where they were able to live imagined adventures (as it were), sailing and climbing and prospecting for gold and, in my favorite book, Winter Holiday, exploring the frozen north. This is the best series of books about children doing things outdoors that was ever written; it is imaginative and fun without being fantastic. One can imagine, that given a similar lake and mountains, one could do the same things. Here's the link to the original 1930 review of Swallows and Amazons (which is also interesting in a How They Wrote Reviews Back Then way) and here is the original cover:
If you haven't read these books, do! But please put Peter Duck and Missee Lee last on the list--these are the worst in the series.