Lovers of Alfred Wainwright’s Lakeland tomes have a new route they can tackle.

A bus linking the tourist honeypots of Windermere and Keswick has been adorned with artwork depicting the Grumpy Old Fellwalker. Stagecoach Northwest’s 555 route is now home to three special liveried Lakeland Pathfinder double deckers featuring the author of the illustrated guides, along with fellow Lake District literary luminaries William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.

Carless Wainwright would no doubt have approved of the buses: he travelled extensively by public transport while compiling his guides. The back of the bus has a picture of a pipe-smoking Wainwright at work on his hand-drawn books. There is also publicity for the Lake District mountain rescue teams, to mark the 75th anniversary of Britain’s volunteer teams, the first of which was set up in the area.

Ironically for a service aimed at lovers of accessing Cumbria’s open fells, bus company Stagecoach was founded by Brian Souter and his sister Ann Gloag, notorious for her successful court action to keep walkers out of her Perthshire estate at Kinfauns Castle.