Where was Mrs Lewthwaite's?

I guess someone has to post first, so on here goes with a question about the fictional geography of AR's lake. I've occasionally wondered where Mrs Lewthwaite's cottage was supposed to be in relation to Beckfoot? It is clearly meant to be close: we're told that Mrs Blackett walks there in deep snow at night in Winter Holiday to find Sammy, and Cook does likewise in the Picts and the Martyrs to get Billy to drive for the Great Aunt. The implications are that it is close by. But there is no clear indication of whether it was up the Amazon Valley, or along the shore of the lake.

The descriptions of Dick and Dorothea's movements around the Beckfoot woods in Picts and Martyrs make it pretty clear that there were no cottages nearby to get in their way. So was it out of the way along the lake shore, or so far up the valley that it was invisible from Octopus Lagoon?

 

 

 

I'm sure I remember reading that Mrs Lewthwaite's cottage was further round towards the head of the lake. I'll try to source this! Matthew Kynaston London E6

Hi Matthew Thanks - if there is a source it'll be interesting to hear about it. My impression from the books is the same as yours: when Cook returns to Beckfoot from the cottage in the Picts and Martyrs, for instance, AR says she meets the GA at the Beckfoot gate and is surprised when the GA disappears along the Lake road. If Cook had just come back from that direction it might have been more accurate to say they passed each other at the gate. So I do get the impression that the cottage lies the other way, but AR never gives any explicit proof of this, or at least none that I can recall.

Previously Anonymous wrote:

Hi Matthew Thanks - if there is a source it'll be interesting to hear about it. My impression from the books is the same as yours: when Cook returns to Beckfoot from the cottage in the Picts and Martyrs, for instance, AR says she meets the GA at the Beckfoot gate and is surprised when the GA disappears along the Lake road. If Cook had just come back from that direction it might have been more accurate to say they passed each other at the gate. So I do get the impression that the cottage lies the other way, but AR never gives any explicit proof of this, or at least none that I can recall.

Just a quickie to apologise for unintentionally posting the above anonymously; not sure quite how that happened!

Re-reading Matthew's comment, he said he remembered reading that "Mrs Lewthwaite's cottage was further round towards the head of the lake". According to the known geography of AR's fictional lake, this road runs up the Amazon Valley to cross the river below Watersmeet, at the bridge the Swallows and Amazons row under in Swallowdale, and the Ds meet Jacky at before tickling trout in The Picts and the Martyrs.  According to AR's maps, the road then runs towards the head of the lake, presumably along the bottom of the hills flanking Kanchenjunga.

I'd always assumed that the cottage wouldn't lie beyond the bridge - ie to the north of the River Amazon - on the grounds that this would be too far away for Cook to reach quickly, or for Mrs Blackett to do so in the snow in Winter Holiday. However, it does make a lot of sense given the lack of any references to it on the Beckfoot side of the Amazon Valley. I suppose a lot depends on how far it is from Beckfoot to the bridge, and how fast AR felt that characters like Cook and Mrs Blackett might reasonably hurry along.

So far as I know, the only indication of the distance to the bridge is on the "Trek to Tysons" in Pigeon Post, where AR indicates it is at about half a mile, or possibly a little more. If the cottage was a little distance beyond the bridge, this might mean three-quarters of a mile either way. Neither Cook nor Mrs Blackett sound as thought they were particularly athletic, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that they could cover that kind of distance fairly quickly in a serious emergency. Fearing that the Ds were lost in a blizzard would certainly have seemed like an emergency to Mrs Blackett - as would anything to do with the Great Aunt to Cook.   

I think, therefore, that Matthew may have the logical answer - so many thanks!

 

 

It is of course possible to retrospectively change the owner of a comment from anonymous to the correct name .. did I get the above ownership change right?

Previously Gareth Bult wrote:

did I get the above ownership change right?

Yes - thanks.