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Elterwater means Swan Lake in the native tongue of the Vikings who settled here many hundreds of years before my cries disturbed the tranquillity. Swans still glide majestically across the lake.

The mission is no longer open although the hut still nestles in the small copse that's grown up around it. The heart of the community, if that's what you call the transient collection of visitors and holidaymakers, is the Britannia Inn.

My parents would never have entered it. They were tea total. But this year I found the pub busy, friendly, warm and serving a decent pint from the local breweries. The food was about right for this sort of place and we spent two enjoyable evenings just across the road from the cottage where I lived over half a century ago.

I'd lived here for just a month but an invisible thread had again drawn me back and aroused a deep sense of belonging. It may seem tenuous to the casual observer and you may ask if it would have felt the same had my arrival been in a less desirable part of England. But it wasn't and I have a right to call this village, at the mouth of the Langdale Valley, home. Probably the only person who was there this Easter who could stake the claim.

During the visit I stood on the top of Langdale Pikes. It was a favourite spot of my father's. My feet were standing on the rock on which his feet had stood as a young man and probably the feet of his father before him. This was my country. I could have wept - perhaps I did. Primitive feelings usually take us by surprise.