Stephen McClarence finds a car-free tour of the Lake District offers a unique and satisfying perspective It all started with an enigmatic advertisement in The Daily Telegraph: "Energetic couple required for historic house." Suitably intrigued, Peter and Marian Elkington investigated, applied, got the job, upped sticks from South Africa and, 22 years later, are still resident curators at Rydal Mount, William Wordsworth's Lake District home for almost half his life.My visit to the Elkingtons, along with the poet's sofa, ink stand and barometer, is still a week ahead, however, as I spread maps and timetables across my desk to get to grips with "doing" the Lake District without a car.A tourism campaign with the slogan Drive Less, See More is under way in the Lakes. Funded mainly by the UK Department for Transport, it points out that most of the area's 16 million annual visitors get around by car. It aims to encourage more of them to use public transport.To test out the feasibility of exploring by bus and boat, I draw up a three-day whistle-stop Grand-ish Tour of some of the Lakes' literary and scenic highlights. It takes a lot of planning, juggling the 505 Stagecoach service with the 599.I worry about making tight connections. What if a bus doesn't turn up and it's just me and the sheep up on the fells as dusk comes down? I gibber the timetables in my sleep.story_article_left1With fingers tightly crossed, I take the train to Windermere at the start of a trip that will give me five truly special experiences, three of which I might have missed by car.It's a surprisingly fast journey up from Manchester. I'm still pondering a sign outside Wigan station ("Uncle Joe's Mint Balls Keep You All Aglow") when the train pulls into Oxenholme for the branch line to Windermere.Opened in the 1840s, it became a cause célèbre when Wordsworth, fearing the violation of his beloved landscapes, wrote a sonnet condemning it (Is then no nook of English ground secure/ From rash assault?). It wasn't a great poem and the branch line still thrives.I'm staying in Windermere, which is linked by the regular 555 service to some of the Lakes' most popular attractions, including Ambleside, Rydal and Grasmere. Much of the time it surges up and down the busy A591."It is the Tourists' Way," sniffed Doreen Wallace in her 1940s study English Lakeland, "the arterial road of the holiday-makers' paradise."Regular 555 driver Gordon Welsh is more upbeat. "This must be the most beautiful bus journey in the world."We have plenty of time to talk as, two minutes after setting off from Windermere, Gordon stops the bus to sort out a problem with the engine coolant. We have to wait 45 minutes for an engineer but, up in the top-deck front seats, Paul and Tracey Woodward are philosophical."We were planning to pick up the 516 in Ambleside, but we'll have missed it," says Tracey. "We adjust what we're going to do around the timetables, but you have to allow for unforeseen circumstances." The Woodwards, a middle-aged Liverpool couple, are great bus enthusiasts."If the weather's nice you get a much better view than you do in a car," says Paul. "And you don't have to go back to the car on the same route when you're out walking."story_article_right2The errant coolant means that, after a 20-minute run alongside Lake Windermere - blurred by blue-grey morning mist - I'm late for my appointment with the Elkingtons at Rydal Mount, a five-minute walk up the hill from the bus stop.The substantial but homely house, much restored and extended since Wordsworth's day, is still owned by his descendants. The poet revised I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud at Rydal (200 years ago this year: vases of daffodils are dotted around) and he published The Prelude, his poetic blockbuster, from here.The many exhibits include his cigar box and a startling portrait of him aged 77, three years before his death. Deeply depressed by the death of his daughter Dora, he looks frail and desolate."One of these books in this bookcase belonged to him, but we don't tell people which," says Peter Elkington.The delay has sabotaged my planned timetable. So instead of waiting for the next bus, I walk to another Wordsworth home, the much-visited Dove Cottage.It's an easy 3.2km stroll along part of the unenticingly named Coffin Path, one of the poet's favourite walks. The stony track crosses the lower slopes of a hill and, in the milky midday sunshine, with the birds chirping, it's gloriously liberating. It's my first special experience.Dove Cottage is as dark and tiny as Rydal Mount is light and spacious; it's a logistical challenge to get 50-strong coach parties in. Perhaps the prize exhibit is the couch on which Wordsworth often lay "in vacant or in pensive mood".More bizarre is a room wallpapered in the early 1800s with yellowing newspapers to keep out the cold. Britain's annual expenditure (then £54-million), crime, lost spaniels: it's all here.Just down the road, I rejoin the 555 to tourist-busy Keswick, where the profusion of walking and climbing shops makes it arguably the world capital of Gore-Tex.mini_story_image_hleft1The teatime bus journey back to Windermere is my second special experience. The top deck gives wonderful views of great masses of mountain, bleak and brooding in the light of the setting sun. The Woodwards are sitting at the back. What have they been doing all day?"Sitting on buses mostly," says Paul cheerfully, "and drinking tea."The car-free tourism campaign also suggests using lake cruises as a way of getting around the region. I take one from Bowness across Lake Windermere, where gulls perch on every bobbing buoy, and I get off at Ambleside.Here I discover the Armitt Museum, an absorbing place full of unexpected things, and my third special experience.It features works by the radical German artist Kurt Schwitters, who settled in Ambleside as a refugee in 1945 and spent his last three years here. "Elderly people around here remember him as a very shambling man," says curator Deborah Walsh. "He would go around picking up bus tickets to use in his collages."In the next room are detailed watercolours by Beatrix Potter, mostly of fungi: there is, after all, a world beyond Squirrel Nutkin and Jemima Puddle-Duck. "And I'll just show you this," adds Deborah, opening a storage box to reveal letters by the Victorian art critic and social reformer John Ruskin.Next day I explore Ruskin's legacy. I take a morning 505 bus to Coniston. It's packed with ramblers bristling with Nordic poles. The driver greets local shoppers like old friends.The bus edges down narrow lanes, doing nifty pas de deux with oncoming tractors and lorries. Passengers get plenty of opportunities to study the moss on roadside walls from a few inches away. "See you next week," says the elderly lady as she gets off. "Looking forward to it," says the driver.mini_story_image_hright2It's a quarter-hour stroll from the Coniston stop to the jetty for lake cruises. Gliding across Coniston Water - my fourth special experience - is the most romantic way to reach Brantwood, Ruskin's last home. Looming over the lake is the fell called the Old Man of Coniston, which is effectively what Ruskin became.Brantwood is a magical place, with a powerful sense of the writer's presence. There are no guided tours or rope barriers; visitors are left to wander around and browse, as if they are house guests waiting for Ruskin to come home.Cabinets are cluttered with coins and shells and bits of tree bark. A turret in the corner of a bedroom offers an astonishing panorama of lake and mountains.I half expected that exploring the Lake District by bus would be a nightmare. It wasn't.Apart from the coolant delay, everything worked, with every bus on time. And the Brantwood trip was like a day in a dream. My final special experience.- The free Traveller's Guide to the South & Central Lakes brochure includes a wealth of suggestions for car-free travel and days out, with clear maps and street plans. Available at tourist information centres and hotels , it can also be downloaded from golakes.co.uk/travel .- ©The Sunday Telegraph..