Back in 1983 I was writing my, to date, one and only novel - a fantasy about King Arthur, but set within a version of England inhabited by a fair number of creatures of legend and superstition. It was based on the original legends as far as I could research them and I ignored most characters that only made an appearance from the 12th century onwards when Geoffrey of Monmouth suddenly conjured Lancelot into being and turned the sixth century Arthur and his followers into eleventh and twelfth century knights in shining metal armour.
Early historical and contemporary records of Arthur are very few and then tend to be no more than single-sentence entries such as in the Annals of Wales. Early legends are full of references to fairy folk. So I included them (with some glee) into the book. Almost every region of England has local legends claiming sites as Arthurian castles, forts, battle sites, Camelot, you name it. So I also set out to include quite a number of both famous sites such as Tintagel and lesser known sites such as this one.
This is Martin Mere near Burscough in West Lancashire. Before it was drained it was apparently once the largest body of fresh water to be found in England. Even today this marshland is an impressive sight. Now operated as a bird sanctuary and wildfowl centre on a cold March day in 1983 birds were few and far between and, if they had any sense, were sunning themselves in warmer climes... No matter. It wasn't particularly the birds that I had come to see.
It was the fact that this mere is one contender for the site of the legendary Lake Linnius, sometime home to the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend. It's not the only place that claims to be Linnius and certainly not the only lake to claim the priestess-cum-sorceress-cum-neophyte-cum-enchantress, Nimue or Vivienne or whatever, look let's just say I had a varied choice ok? Anyway, the atmosphere on that gloomy day well suited the legend.
The book, King And King To Be, was published in 2012 and is available as an eBook in Amazon's Kindle Store - see link in the side column.
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