HIDDEN ISLANDS HOW TO
HIDDEN ISLANDS PATCH

The island is still popular with children, though they're more likely to come over in organised groups learning how to handle kayaks or canoes than on their own in a dinghy. As a child, Ransome came to Coniston every year with his family, and his father Cyril would often row them across to Peel Island for a picnic, no doubt sowing the seed for his children's story Swallows and Amazons. If you have read Arthur Ransome's description of Wild Cat Island – with its one pine standing proud of rowans, oaks and beech trees its rocky shore repelling landings to all vessels whose captains did not know the secret of the island's one safe passage and its pleasant glades where picnics could be enjoyed and stratagems hatched – you have seen Peel island. Timetables at /hall/timetable.htm Peel Island, Coniston Water, CumbriaĪlthough you might never have visited Peel Island, there's a chance your imagination may already have taken you there. If you fancy taking one home yourself, you should know that the victor in the men's competition invariably gets his smooth slate projectile to hit the back wall of the quarry, a throw of some 200ft, while the female champion usually skims her stone just over half that distance. Although the event is intended first and foremost to be fun – with a big knees-up in the community centre the night before – there are proper rules and regulations and referees and everything, with a trophy for the winner of each category. The contest, which is open to all comers, takes place in one of the flooded quarries every September. What little fame Easdale has today is down to its hosting of the World Stone Skimming Championships (). The sea has turned the quarries into lagoons, while long grasses, wild fuchsia and blackthorn have covered what the sea cannot penetrate. These have an otherworldly feel to them, as if formed by a giant poking his rough fingers deep into the island from above in a misguided mission to supply its inhabitants with swimming pools. Meanwhile, a wander around the outside of the island, over its millions of shards of slate, takes in all half dozen or so flooded quarries. Towards the middle of the isle stands a flat-topped hillock, its flanks torn off to reveal dark cliffs. Whitewashed one-storey cottages of far greater vintage arrange themselves in rather haphazard lines around the inlet that serves as a harbour.

With no roads and no cars, anything that needs ferrying about on the grassy footpaths is taken in a wheelbarrow, so this is the island's equivalent of a car park.

HIDDEN ISLANDS PATCH

On a small patch of grass by the harbour a battalion of them lie upside down. Today, the first thing you notice as you get off the little boat that carries you over in a blink from Ellenabeich is wheelbarrows.

Hidden islands