Fell Farm Campers by Marjorie Lloyd

Published 1960

This is the final one of the Fell Farm books, set the Easter before the children's parents return from abroad, when they expect everything may be about to change. The holiday nearly doesn't come off - Fell Farm, which is a National Trust property, has the builders in, and there's no room. Happily, they think of camping, and the Jenks can squeeze young Sally in despite the work, so they can go ahead, which is just as well really, as there's not much room for them all in Aunt G.'s London flat either, and she's very anxious about whether the neighbours will complain when they are all there at once.

Once they get there the children set up camp by the tarn quite near the farm - far enough away to be independent, but close enough to be able to collect milk and other supplies easily, and for Sally to run messages between the two, which pleases her. They also all return to the farm once a day for a proper meal, cooked by the bountiful Mrs Jenks on oil stoves in the big barn. The rest of the day they are free to roam, whether it's just to collect wood (pig-sticking) to keep the camp fire going, or to set off on one of their mammoth hikes across the fells - they are indefatigable walkers!

Just after nine they started along the edge of the little Heron Tarn, scrambled over the wall into the narrow mountain road and turned sharply right downhill. The whole length of that rough, twisty little lane dropping steeply down to Oxenfell, gave the most tremendous views across all the ridges and deep cut valleys towards Wetherlam, Bowfell, the Langdale Pikes, and the rest, and they discussed the route as they tramped down with the whole region spread in front like a map, fullscale and gloriously coloured.

Various adventures occur - brushes with fellow campers, a hunt for a sheep-killing dog...Jan and Hyacinth set off on a birdwatching expedition which nearly ends in disaster again. The story romps along, told in the third person this time: Hyacinth is on strike and says she won't keep a journal as there will be lots of other work to do while they are camping (indeed, Kay seems to spend all her spare time darning socks!) These are certainly books to charm the adult reader, but I think that a child who enjoyed the outdoor life might find much to entertain, as well, and I well remember day-dreaming about being able to go off on camping holidays when I was a child (conveniently ignoring my dislike of midges, aversion to spiders and preference for a comfortable bed, even then). There are pleasing cat and dog characters too.

Fell Farm for Christmas

It's a little late to be writing about this, but the temperature has just dropped sharply as the sun set, so not too inappropriate!

Children just don't have holidays like this any more: the five Brownes - two pairs of twins and their younger sister - return to the Westmorland farm they had visited during the summer, ready for a winter holiday of brisk walks and birdwatching. The story starts with their train journey, via Crewe, Oxenholme and Windermere, and I was instantly nostalgic for all the times in childhood I travelled on that line (for some reason I was particularly fond of Crewe station, perhaps because it used to be such an enormous interchange that there was always plenty to look at):

We were somewhere between Hest Bank and Carnforth - the bit where the railway runs along the edge of the sea, and you usually get the first view of the fells, looking simply wonderful across the great curve of the bay.
But this time it was half past four on an afternoon in late December, and the light had gone from the sky, except for some long, dim bars of gold just above the horizon. I swore that I could just glimpse the faintest gleam of snow-caps, pale as silver. The others said that it was imagination, and maybe it was; but it really didn't matter, because we all knew that they were there.

Hyacinth, our narrator, combines a romantic imagination (she has her notebooks with her, so that she can continue writing The Mystery of the Blood-Stained Hippopotamus during the holiday) and down-to-earth practicality about things like supplies for walks, and we're plunged straight into farm life and long tramps round the fells. In one of my favourite chapters Hyacinth's twin Jan rescues a heron which has got trapped in a pond, frozen in while fishing. A few years ago I rescued a heron myself, and could share their wonder at being so close to such a remarkable bird, and their pleasure in its return to health. The sheep rustling scene, on the other hand, would make any modern parent's blood run cold, I fear! And I can't think that many children wash their own socks these days, more's the pity.

Fell Farm for Christmas is an attractively brisk romp, the sort of holiday children of my generation dreamed of, with lots of fresh air, hearty food and adventure. It was published the year I was born and the past is a golden place in these pages. My own holidays weren't so eventful (I never knowingly met a sheep rustler!), but otherwise not so very different from what is described here. I shall pass it on next to my mother, who spent the war not far from Carnforth, and still gets wistful about it.

Oh, and there are maps. I do like a map and they are suitably Wainwright-ish.

Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

Pigeons at dawn.... (first published 1936)

I thought that, as I have been so neglecting the Bookshelf, that I would post a quick catch-up. As some of you will know, I have been in Devon looking after Aged Parents, and far too busy fetching and carrying to attend to my blog. By bedtime I was too tired for much reading, so I found an old copy of Arthur Ransome's Pigeon Post, which kept me going longer than you could imagine. It was very comforting, a story of prospecting for gold on the Cumbrian fells. The characters are familiar from Swallows and Amazons, with the addition of Dick and Dorothea Callum. Nancy is determined to find gold before Captain Flint gets home from foreign climes, although plans are initially frustrated by Mrs Blackett's refusal to let them camp on the fells because a drought means that there is no water anywhere. How the problem is overcome is too good to spoil, so I'm not going to tell it here.

Much ingenuity is exercised in devising a communication system with homing pigeons - Mrs Blackett is remarkably tolerant about the final arrangement which involves a loudly clanging bell whenever a pigeon deigns to return to its home (the dilatory and unreliable Sappho comes home at 5am). And the long-awaited arrival of the armadillo, Timothy, is delightful.

I wasn't a huge fan of Ransome's books when I was a child, but I am making up for it now, partly, I suppose, because it makes me rather nostalgic for the days when children had freedom to go off with a tent and quantities of revolting things in tins, without the feeling that adults were peering over their shoulders all day. I felt especially wistful at the idea that a group of children would amuse themselves far into the night by singing campfire songs. The sun used to shine in those days, too.