Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and Swallows and Amazons is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.

Coniston Water is a lake in the Lake District in North West England. It is the third largest by volume, after Windermere and Ullswater, and the fifth-largest by area. The lake has a length of 8.7 kilometres, a maximum width of 730 metres (800 yd), and a maximum depth of 56.1 m. Its outflow is the River Crake, which drains into Morecambe Bay via the estuary of the River Leven. The lake is in the unitary authority of Westmorland and Furness, and the ceremonial county of Cumbria.