The SWINK Charity Trek 2008 Suzie Walks in the North with Keats

Welcome to my blog. I will be keeping this page up to date with developments as I work towards my target to raise £5000 shared between the Lymphoedema Support Network and St Margaret's Somerset Hospice.

Helm Crag

Helm Crag

Friday 29 August 2008

Where did the blog go?!!

Well, I KNOW I updated this blog!! I hope you don't all think there is still 100 miles to go?!

Two trips up since the March expedition and now I am almost there. Just 20 miles to go!!!! I walked for a week with my brother, sister and nephew in June, and have just come back from a two week trip with Peter and my son James. All the walk between Lancaster and Keswick is covered and a reccie of the land between keswick and carlisle reveals a very different landscape to that covered by Keats and Brown. Even back in the 1930s Nelson Bushnell was not impressed with the route through Wigton and Ireby, and he would be even less so now. Main A roads traversing relatively uninspiring farmland offering few opportunities to escape via public footpaths.

Comfitted by the knowledge that when things got dreary Keats and Brown took a coach to a further more interesting staging post, I have decided to cover the few remaining miles in parts of the Lakes which, if Keats didn't actually visit them, they would have offered more poetic inspiration than a main road into Carlisle. I will travel the route by car to complete a photographic record, looking at the changes over the past 80 years and the last 30, but I want to gauge how far someone with limited mobility can enjoy walking in Cumbria and be inspired in the way Keats was. Raising awareness of lymphoedema was a big part of this challenge and I am already pulling together articles to pitch to various magazines and newsletters.

I have so many photographs that need to be ordered and placed in context that publishing them on this site might not be possible so I will create a link as soon as I have a proper presentation ready.

1 comment:

bullfrog said...

Suzie:

??? Who is/was Nelson Bushnell. You mentioned he had followed the Keats/Brown trail in the 1930's.

Thanks.

Hank