He pushed north into a higher kind of country: taller trees, steeper hills, all still insistently green. The road curled and doglegged: sharper angles than he was used to. As he climbed, the forest petered out and he came to be surrounded on all sides by rich paddocks, dotted all over with black-faced sheep. Ancient stone fences cut the land into a rough grid. The sky was close. Up the road twisted, until it peaked in a saddle between two grassy peaks, before shooting down into a field of huge, shining lakes.

He had, up to that point, expected very little of the British landscape. Had thought of it as a mountainless, beachless, heatless place where tweeded farmers shot pheasants and children were always going on picnics. Had thought its greyness and greenness to be emblematic of all this. But now he saw these lakes, pocked through a rugged country of dramatic hills. He began to understand why his mother had loved it here.

Ned coasted to one of the little towns, found a room in a pub with low ceilings, moustached men, and a large fire with a group of border collies steaming on its hearth. Felt like he’d fallen through time.

In the morning he found a man who agreed to take him out on the water. They cast off from the pier onto Lake Windermere. Ned helped the man raise the sail, and for a few hours they coasted about, taking in the contours of the lake. The man told Ned about the others: Ullswater, Grasmere, Coniston Water, Buttermere. Fairytale names to Ned. From the water, the hills—fells, the man called them—were even larger, more dramatic. Oak, ash and red-berried rowans dominated their lower slopes, ceding the heights to grass and sheep and stone. The wind was light. There were no waves.