Swallows and Amazons characters in Arthur Ransome books According to Ransome, every place in his book can be found in the Lake District, but he took different locations and placed them in different ways: the lake is a fictionalised version of Windermere but the surrounding countryside more closely resembles that around Coniston. Wild Cat Island, the location of the island camp, has elements from Peel Island in Coniston and Blake Holme (or Blakeholme) in Windermere. Holly Howe, the farmhouse where the Swallows stay, is based on Bank Ground Farm, which exists to this day. It was featured in the 1974 film. Reviewing the
Swallows and Amazons series Broads before moving to the lake in the north. "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea" and "Secret Water" are set in coastal Suffolk and Essex, with the former involving a voyage to Flushing, Netherlands and the latter the exploration of the islands of Hamford Water near Walton-on-the-Naze. The books "Peter Duck" and "Missee Lee" involve voyages of the schooner "Wild Cat" to the Caribbean and the South China Sea. These stories appear to be metafictional in relation to the rest of the series, and were originally planned by Ransome (see below) as stories written by the children. The final