Pottering about

TERRY Marsh trudges along the rural lanes of northwest England in search of some much-loved characters and is enchanted by what he finds.

Biopic ... Miss Potter, which stars Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger, combines stories from Beatrix Potter's life with animated sequences from the author's charming tales.

LIKE so many artists, Beatrix Potter could never have imagined the popularity she was to gain after her death in 1943. The thought that she would become the subject of a film might have driven her further into the anonymity of the rural lifestyle that was to dominate her later years.

Miss Potter, a biopic of the children's author and illustrator –- directed by London-based Australian filmmaker Chris Noonan, who brought us Babe –- combines stories from her life with animated sequences from her charming tales. Scripted by the American screenwriter Richard Maltby Jr, who directed the Tony-winning Broadway revue Fosse, the film stars Renee Zellweger in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Potter's publisher and fiance Norman Warne.

Miss Potter was filmed in London (in Cecil Court, a peaceful Victorian pedestrian street, and the bustling, old covered market, Covent Garden), on the Isle of Man, which increasingly plays a role as a filmmaking location, and in the English Lake District.

It is the Lake District that has invariably been a focus of interest in the Potter context. It was here that, as a child, she came for family holidays and fell in love with the verdant landscapes. During one of her visits, she met the local vicar, Hardwicke Rawnsley, a man who was deeply worried about the effects of industry and rising tourism on the Lake District. Through him, Potter learned the importance of conservation, an enthusiasm that was to stay with her throughout her life. Rawnsley went on to found the National Trust in 1895.

Illustrated with watercolours, Potter's simple, unsentimental stories for children involve the adventures of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, the hedgehog Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and many others. She wrote most of her books between the 1890s and 1920s, publishing 23, all in a format small enough for children to hold.

Potter became secretly engaged to her publisher, Warne, but her parents were set against her marrying anyone who worked for a living. When he died before the wedding, it caused a breach between the writer and her parents.

Potter's output declined in about 1920 because of poor eyesight, though her last book, The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, was not published until 1930. After Warne's death, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in the hamlet of Near Sawrey in the Lake District in Cumbria. She loved the fertile, wooded, hilly scenery that surrounds the tiny village, full of endearing nooks and crannies, and she travelled from London to visit the farm as often as she could. With the increasing flow of royalties from her books, Potter began to buy pieces of land under the guidance of a local solicitor, William Heelis, whom she married in 1913, when she was 47. That's when she moved permanently to Hill Top.

Fascination with Potter and her time in the Lake District is now greater than before and her story is captivating. The 17th-century Hill Top Farm is open to the public, but has a timed entry system to prevent overcrowding in its tiny rooms.

The house remains just as Potter left it, and in each room there is something that appears in one of her books. The cottage garden, too, still has the agreeable mix of flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables that she grew.

In the nearby village of Hawkshead, the Beatrix Potter Gallery is dedicated to exhibiting Potter's original book illustrations. It is in the 17th-century townhouse that housed Heelis's law office. The interior remains largely unchanged and gives an insight into an Edwardian solicitor's workplace. Artefacts and information about Potter's life and work are on display here, together with the artworks.

In Windermere, one of the region's most popular destinations, The World of Beatrix Potter, an award-winning tourist attraction, brings all 23 of Potter's tales to three-dimensional life; here you can meet Cecily Parsley and the Amiable Guinea-Pig, and say hello to old friends such as Jemima Puddleduck.

Visitors who can't get enough of Potter might consider spending a couple of nights at Lindeth Howe Hotel, just a short distance south of the lakeside village of Bowness-on-Windermere. The hotel was bought by Potter in 1913 and became her mother's home.

Today this award-winning hotel, set in mature gardens, offers fine country-house accommodation, with excellent dining in a restaurant that serves seasonal local produce. In the lounges and bar there are images and memorabilia from Potter's time at Lindeth Howe, including photographs of the writer and her mother, many of them taken by her brother Rupert.

The hotel links up with a local transport business, Mountain Goat, to provide the complete Beatrix Potter experience: a day-long excursion visiting Hill Top Farm, Jeremy Fisher's Esthwaite Water, Jemima Puddleduck's village of Near Sawrey, Squirrel Nutkin's Derwentwater, beautiful Tarn Hows and Monk Coniston Estate.

It also takes in film locations at Yewdale, Yew Tree Farm, Loughrigg Tarn and Grasmere, a cruise on Coniston Water, time to explore Hawkshead village (where, as an added bonus, William Wordsworth went to school), a visit to the "queen of the English lakes", Ullswater, and the enigmatic ancient stone circle at Castlerigg, believed to predate Stonehenge.

In her will, Potter left almost all of her property to the National Trust, 16sqkm of land, cottages and 15 farms. The legacy has helped preserve the beauty of the Lake District and traditional farming practices remain unspoiled.

Quite what the retiring writer would have made of all the attention is another matter.