Children’s literature postgrad Elizabeth Williams from Newcastle University recently came to research the East Coast locations used by Ransome and Julia Jones, and was delighted to accept an invitation to visit the Goblin – alias Nancy Blackett. Here’s her account of the day:

I love reading children’s books, and rereading the ones I’m particularly attached to. I was an adult (just) when I read "Swallows and Amazons" for the first time, then the rest of the series. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread them since. When I discovered Christina Hardyment’s "Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint’s Trunk" fifteen years later, I found out that although the lake was imaginary the east coast setting and the Goblin were real.

About a year ago I came across Julia Jones’s "Strong Winds" series, stories set in the present but intertwined with Ransome’s east coast books, embedded in the same landscape. I’d never been to the area between Woodbridge and Harwich and decided to visit the setting of "We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea" and Julia’s books.  As a fan I’d already corresponded with her so I asked if she could suggest some good locations to visit. Julia did more than that, she offered to spend the day with me visiting them and arranged for John Benford, the Sailing Secretary of the Nancy Blackett Trust, to show me around the yacht. I may have been an adult for a Very Long Time but I was really excited. It was an adventure.

On my way to Woodbridge I stopped at the Red Lion in Martlesham to look at the real lion of "The Lion of Sole Bay". A word of advice to anyone else who wants to follow the dotted line between the pub and Martlesham Creek shown on the map in Julia’s book – it is very difficult, at least it is in January. Adventures are all very well but… . If instead you join the Fynn Valley Walk from the Waldringfield road there is a very nice short walk through the woods to the lovely quiet moorings.

The next day I met Julia and her mother June and we set off to Woolverstone. As June is nearly ninety I was sent on ahead to spot the Nancy Blackett. I was clueless and couldn’t understand how Julia could see the yacht from so far away, until she pointed out that there was only one wooden mast. John waved and we climbed aboard.

John Benford on the Nancy Blackett

Like the Walkers in "We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea", ‘down [we] went into the cabin, climbing down the steep steps of the companion’. Perhaps it was so many years of clambering around their yacht Peter Duck that enabled June to do it without hesitating! We were, like the Walker children, ‘all in the cabin, sitting on the bunks, peering forward at two more bunks in the forecabin, looking at bookshelf and barometer and clock’. On the bookshelf was "Sailing" by E. F. Knight and of course "We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea". No character in Ransome’s books is described or drawn in such loving detail as the Goblin. I can’t remember whether we had tea or coffee, I was far too distracted by the surroundings. As we left the pontoon, I looked back, Nancy’s wooden mast golden brown among the silver of the modern yachts.

…Nancy’s wooden mast golden brown among the silver of the modern yachts.

We went to tiny Pin Mill for lunch at the Butt and Oyster, passing Alma Cottage, the scene little changed since Ransome sketched it. Pin Mill features in Julia’s trilogy too, ‘a picturesque jumble of boats and cottages with a pub almost in the water’.

At Pin Mill

Another day I must walk down the Orwell to Shotley but on this trip we went in the car. Shotley no longer has ‘a lot of grey naval cutters and whalers and gigs’ seen by the Walkers from the Goblin, but it is still fascinating. "The Salt- Stained Book" describes the sharp contrast now between Shotley Marina and the ‘herd of dinosaurs’ of Felixstowe where ‘those ships are so big it’s hard to get them in perspective’. Ransome described Harwich, ‘a little grey town, with its church tower and lighthouse tower’, but before the days of container ships there were tall mills, green sheds and ‘a huge gantry for lifting planes out of the water’ in Felixstowe Dock. Also in Ransome’s era, there wasn’t a strange sailing vessel anchored in the channel. It looks slightly sinister and features as the villain’s ship in Julia’s trilogy. To find out more about it, look up the Wikipedia entry for HMS Beckford.

HMS Beckford at Shotley

I had a fantastic day. Thank you so much to John, Julia and June. Now I’m planning to come back to explore the Walton backwaters of "Secret Water", and the Essex marshes described by another children’s author and sailor, Kathleen Peyton.

– Elizabeth Williams