International Children’s Book Day is celebrated each year on or around 2nd April, Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday. In this, the fiftieth year, it continues to be a clarion call to children the world over to put down other distractions, pick up a book and enter the world of imagination and learning.
We’ve chosen a bit of an oldie, but one that continues the theme of getting the children out in the beautiful Lake District countryside.
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go. — Dr. Seuss, “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”
From easy readers to teenage fiction, encyclopaedias to the oxford English dictionary, books are foundational in helping to shape and form our identities.
Wild Walks with Rocky Rambler
Blowing the dust off the lower shelves of my bookcase, I re-discovered a children’s book that, I confess, does look a little old fashioned these days. However, Rocky Rambler’s Wild Walks will literally take your children into another world – the world of the Lake District Hotels great outdoors!
Beware of Grown-ups
Rocky Rambler encourages children not to let grown-ups become a nuisance, and to beware of grown-ups who think they know where they are on the map, but are in fact hopelessly lost. He brings along his friends, Rachel Rambler, Monty Goat, Sid the Squirrel and Harriet the Herdwick, and together they discover the adventure of ten distinct, colour coded child-friendly walks, all under 5 km.
Each walk is depicted like a snakes and ladders game, each rectangular block being approximately 100 m long. There are other colourful illustrations along the way, enabling young walkers to identify where they are, and a few interesting facts for each walk. Other features are a ‘What to Wear’ page, a key to the symbols and a Country Code section. The book is spiral bound which makes it easier for little hands to hold.
Buy Rocky Rambler’s Wild Walks … I’m going to be a Rocky-Bagger and do all the walks before I’m seven. Harry Hartsop, aged 6 and a half
Rocky Rambler’s Wild Walks, Iain Peters and Colin Shelbourn
Cicerone Press, 2002
Produced in association with the Lake District National Park Authority
ISBN: 1 85248 347 0
£8 , Available from Amazon.co.uk
Fun with Sam the Dog
At English Lakes we have our own intrepid adventurer – Sam the Dog. He patiently waits on the beds in all our hotel bedrooms to welcome our young guests and has created his own activities for his young friends to get involved with whilst visiting. Sam can also be seen out and about at the hotels, but has been spotted much further afield – he’s even taken a little trip to outer space.
