It's strictly a coincidence. Really. The book didn't make that big an impression on me. But in late May, I'll be hiking over the fells and through the dales of Westmorland, the locale of the young adult novel, The Hollow Land, which I praised a couple of months ago.
My hike will actually be the western half of the celebrated "Coast-to-Coast" route, beginning on the beach of the Irish Sea at St. Bees, and ending up at Kirkby Stephen, just before the pathway crosses into Yorkshire. I will thus be crossing the Lake District from west to east, before passing into Westmorland on the third day.. At some point a bit south of Keswick, I will cross the route my niece and I followed three years ago, as we hiked from south to north.
The hike will cross the historic counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, counties that were combined for bureaucratic purposes into the new county of "Cumbria" in 1972 under Mrs. Thatcher.
I will be hiking for seven days, at a leisurely average of 12 miles per day. But the hiking will be through mountainous areas for most of the route.
I'm doing this hike not only because I loved the Lake District when we hiked there in 2012, but in order to help prepare for my trek in the Pamirs in July. I'll have about six weeks between the end of the England hike and the beginning of the trek in China, which should allow plenty of time for my body to recover from any wear and tear it may have sustained, without significantly losing its improved conditioning.
The month of May is rumored to be the least rainy month of the year in the area I'll be visiting. Based on life in the Northwest Corner, that's hard to believe. But we shall see.
And maybe I'll meet one of the ancient ghosts -- Roman or Celt or Viking or Saxon -- that haunted the imaginations of the two boys in The Hollow Land. Now, that would be an adventure.
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