Finding a Reason to Take a Walk
As two mothers explain in today's London Times, a little imagination helps in getting "kids off the sofa"
According to their article, Becky Jones and Clare Lewis wanted to break the cycle of Play Station, TV and sofa boredom, where "children growing up in the digital age don't necessarily know how to enjoy the outdoors as we did: getting muddy, runnng wild, climbing hills or spotting birds, bugs, trees and flowers".
They chose to do so by finding a focus for adventurous walks, tracking down the locations of classic children's stories, including Pin Mill, the starting point of We Didn't Mean to go to Sea and Secret Water.
You can find their article here, together with details of their new book, Adventure Walks for Families in and Around London.
If you would like a good guide to Ransome walks and locations in the Lake District and East Anglia, you could try Roger Wardale's In Search of Swallows and Amazons: Arthur Ransome's Lakeland, or his Arthur Ransome's East Anglia: A Search for Coots, Swallows and Amazons, or Jon Spark's Arthur Ransome's Lake District, all available from the TARS Stall

