This time instead of the main focus being on sailing as it was in the first three, the novel is about (as the title cunningly suggests) a winter holiday in the lake district. Ransome cleverly sends the Swallows' mother away (to Malta with their youngest sister to visit their Naval officer father). Nancy and Peggy are living at home with their mother as usual. Dick and Dorothea are having a holiday at the home of their mother's former nurse (Mrs Dixon) while their parents are in Egypt on an archaelogical dig.
With the grownups conveniently gone, the children are free to have adventures in the snow and ice around Windemere: instead of being sailors and pirates they are artic explorers and their project is to trek to the "north pole".
When I read these novels as a child, this was my favourite. Dick and Dorothea wonder at the skills of the other, older, children but they also have skills that the Swallows and Amazons envy. All children share a fantastically vivid imagination and they remind me of myself in some respects.
What has struck me about this series is just how much freedom the children had back then. This would probably frighten the skin of modern parents but for someone who grew up in the 70s in small-town England it is something to be envied. Back when I was a girl it was common for my mum to pack me up some sandwiches, a drink and some snacks and wave goodbye as I rode off for the day with my friend on our bikes. We'd be out until it was nearly dark, roaming all around Windsor Great Park. Even that much freedom seems to scare modern people - but we didn't make fires, camp out overnight or sail around a huge lake in small sailing boats.
