The Swallows and Amazons mission to help battered Lakes
landscape, spirit and adventure, encouraging fans to translate the onscreen escapades to real life.
On a bespoke website, the tourism body will map out where fans can find real-life film locations, actors’ favourite trips and opportunities for sailing and camping for children.
The project is intended to boost tourism, particularly in the
heartland of the Lake District, which suffered from flooding earlier this year.
Research has shown the enormous advantage a successful film can lend its real-life locations, with Visit England calculating Alnwick Castle recorded a 230 per cent rise in visitors and £9 million in extra spending after appearing in the first two Harry Potter films.
Highclere Castle, the stately home star of has seen its fortunes transformed by the ITV period drama, while Cornwall has enjoyed the effect”.
The partnership is the most extensive tie-in Visit England has done so far, and follows a smaller scale tour of Norwich linked with Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge film,
Patricia Yates, director of strategy and communications for VisitBritain and VisitEngland, said: “We know that the links between tourism, film and TV are potent ones and deliver a real increase in visitor numbers with just under half of our potential visitors to Britain wanting to visit places they have seen featured in films or TV so we are doing everything we can to capitalise on this ‘set-jetting’ phenomenon.”
The tourism bodies hope more than 120 million people worldwide will see the film in its opening three weeks, with surveys showing 40 per cent of those would be “very likely” to visit locations they had admired on screen.
Research from the British Film Institute, published last year, showed film tourism brought £400 million to the UK last year. Up to one in 10 visitors to Britain now comes as a result of seeing the country depicted in film.
which was screened to the industry in Cannes earlier this year and is due for release on Aug 19, is based on the much-loved Arthur Ransome book, about the Walker children’s summer holiday to the Lake District.
This version updates the story of pluck and adventure to include a plot featuring gun-wielding Russian spies in pursuit of Uncle Jim, and a denouement featuring the children chasing a seaplane across their lake.
The dedicated VisitEngland website now encourages tourists to “have your very own adventure this summer in England’s great outdoors”. Highlighted film locations include Coniston and Derwentwater in Cumbria, and Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire.