To celebrate 250 years since his birth, we take 10 train and bus trips to houses, gardens, lakes – vales and hills, too – that were important to this early environmentalist Phoebe Taplin Wed 11 Mar 2020 06.30 GMT Last modified on Wed 11 Mar 2020 06.35 GMT Shares 121 Sunset view of Rydal Water, Cumbria. Sunset view of Rydal Water, Cumbria. Photograph: Phoebe Taplin William Wordsworth was born in Cumbria 250 years ago, on 7 April 1770. Inspired by nature and a sense of place, he was an environmentalist as well as a poet, so it’s fitting to visit the places he celebrated in as eco-friendly a way as possible. Here are car-free pilgrimages in his well-worn footsteps. Cockermouth Wordsworth was born in a grand, terracotta-coloured house on Cockermouth’s Main Street that’s now a National Trust museum. Wordsworth House (adult £8.80, child £4.40, family £22) is marking the anniversary with an exhibition (from 14 March) about the poet’s free-range childhood. Don’t miss the free tea and coffee upstairs or the garden backing onto the Derwent (Wordsworth’s “fairest of all rivers”). Get there Stagecoach buses X4 and X5 from Penrith station to Cockermouth take 1 hour 25 minutes; with views that include the cloud-capped slopes of Skiddaw and fields of Herdwick sheep, it’s time well spent, (explorer ticket £11.50). Direct trains run to Penrith from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. Wordsworth’s early schooling was in Penrith, and he met his wife, Mary Hutchinson, near red sandstone St Andrew’s, with its crocus-carpeted churchyard. Stay The North Lakes hotel and spa has log fires and a pool and is 10 minutes’ walk from Penrith station, with doubles from £89 room-only. Cafe VeeVa! in Cockermouth does excellent tangy, melted Lakeland cheddar on ciabatta with salad (£4.95), and a ticket for Wordsworth House gets you 10% off. Hawkshead Grammar School (£2.50, reopens 1 April) with its mullioned windows and sundial over the door, is where Wordsworth went from age eight. The names of Wordsworth and his fellow students can still be seen scratched on the wooden desks. There’s a memorial to Wordsworth’s old teacher in the sturdy stone church above it, and on a cobbled alley, round the corner from the little Beatrix Potter Gallery (£7/£3, family £17.50), is Ann Tyson’s cottage, where Wordsworth stayed. Sign up to The Flyer: weekly travel inspiration, emailed direct to you Read more Get there Hawkshead is 20 minutes on bus 505 from Ambleside, where a plaque marks Wordsworth’s later office on Church Street. Ambleside (15 minutes on bus 555 from Windermere station) is home to the new Aerial festival (26-29 March), featuring poetry on buses, readings on boats, and a sunrise chorus at Castlerigg stone circle. Stay The cheerful, comfortable Ambleside Inn, which reopened a couple of months ago after a transformational revamp, has doubles from £99 room-only; dinner B&B from £89.90pp until 31 March.