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At five miles long and half a mile across at its widest point, Coniston Water is not one of the most immediately imposing of the lakes, yet it has a quiet beauty which sets it apart from the more popular destinations. The nineteenth-century art critic and social reformer John Ruskin made the lake his home and his isolated house, Brantwood, today provides the most obvious target for a day-trip. Some come here, too, on the Swallows and Amazons trail. Arthur Ransome was a frequent visitor, his memories and experiences providing much detail later in his famous children's books. In the mid-1960s, the long uninterruptedly glass-like surface of Coniston Water attracted the attention of national hero Donald Campbell , who in 1955 had set a world water-speed record of 202mph on Ullswater, bumping it up to 276mph nine years later in Australia. On January 4, 1967, he set out to better his own mark on Coniston Water, but just as his jet-powered Bluebird hit an estimated 320mph, a patch of turbulence sent it into a somersault. Campbell was killed immediately and his body and boat lay undisturbed at the bottom of the lake until both were retrieved in 2001, Campbell for reburial at Coniston's cemetery, Bluebird into storage while it's decided what to do with the remains of the boat.
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