Wandering Lonely as a Cloud

"Shall I look at the map and work out a route, then?" I asked them, once we had decided to go from Barrow-in-Furness to Coniston Water yesterday.

"Oh, no need, we know the way," said my parents and Amy.

Indeed they did know the way, kind of: but my mother and Amy, who were schoolfriends, learned it as teenagers on bicycles during the Second World War. All the roadsigns had been removed in case Adolf Hitler, or one of his minions, landed in the middle of the Lake District whilst looking for Barrow-in-Furness where the ships were built.

So Mum and Amy learned the way to everywhere by studying what the way looked like: and while doing this they found that there were lots of different ways to nearly everywhere.

Also, my mother - possibly because she was naturally left-handed and was taught to use her right hand at school - has never known her left from her right. So her way of giving directions in the car is to shout "Left - - I mean right! My way! Turn my way!"

Amy has a different method. All ways are good to her and she finds it hard to choose.

"Which way do I go at the crossroads, Amy?"

"Well, left is a good way. So you could go left. Mind you, right is pretty too - - that's through Nibthwaite. But straight on is lovely, there are lots of bluebells that way".

Meanwhile, my father, the eponymous Marxist-Leninist, desperate to restore order to what he sees as all this chaos, barks directions as to a platoon.

"Left! Turn left NOW! Mind that car! Watch out for the ditch! There's a car on your tail! CAR ON YOUR TAIL!"

Also, they have an inner certainty that I too must really know the way:

"But you've been here before, Daphne! We've brought you to Coniston, I know we have!"

"Yes, Dad. In nineteen-sixty-seven. I don't remember it too clearly."

I know it was nineteen-sixty-seven because it was the week that Donald Campbell died trying to break the speed record on Coniston - even though I was very young I remember the shock of it. The only other thing I remember from that visit is knowing that this was the lake where the Swallows and Amazons stories were based, and the idea of being on a boat on a Lake District lake was thrilling to me - still is, as a matter of fact.

Ah well, after twenty-six miles of baffling directions my passengers proved they did indeed know the way, because we reached Coniston. It was a misty day and it looked like this:



Some latter-day Swallows and Amazons were preparing to go out on the water:



Beautiful. Lake District magic.

Now then, bearing in mind that if Scott of the Antarctic had been directed by my mother and Amy he would have by now have been known as Scott of Somewhere Near Barcelona, I have a good idea for a television programme.

Amy and Joan's Grand Tour

They start off in a car at, say, Windermere, and the driver follows their directions for a week, and we see where they travel and where they end up. It would be riveting. I might even be prepared to drive.