genialgemsandothergabblings

Nella Last probably looked out at this view many times during her life. It is the view across to Piel Island from near Rampside, a location often referred to in her diary. Infact I think it was the place where she said that her grandmother spent a couple of months nursing a sick child. Is this the hotel in Nella's diary where she attended a wedding? Rampside itself is a sleepy little backwater, tucked away with a few houses and cottages on the road  from Barrow to Ulverston. The shore has silted up and a few old fishing boats are scattered here and there and when we visited in winter it had a forlorn look but then so do many such places and come summer they spring to life . The market place in Ulverston where Nella often went with her husband for a drive to shop. Across to Piel Island An old shop in Ulverston that still retains the look of shops 60 years ago that Nella would have known.It is a town that has not seen many changes in the years since Nella knew it. 

I often wonder when I am reading the wonderful  diaries of this extraordinary woman whether she got her last wish , which was that she could have her ashes sprinkled over her beloved Coniston lake. She didn't seem to think this would happen if she died before her husband as he  would not like it, she says in her war time diary. I hope that she was granted that wish but she actually did die a year or so before him and they were no longer  in their home either as they had become unable to manage through ill health and had moved by then to a Darby and Joan home [ a care home of sorts]. Without Coniston  to soothe her in the terrible years of the war and after when there were constant shortages and the demands and ill health of her husband , she may have gone under. It was only a short car ride away  and often they would stop at her old Aunts in Spark bridge to have tea and a chat. Coniston remains a favourite place for me as it was here that we came o...