There are other people's eyes everywhere in the Lake District.

Go to its busier parts and it often feels as if you are looking at it through the vision of many others - it's hard to forget the writers who have been here before. That's particularly so on a family holiday with children, since this is the world of Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter. We arrive from the north, travelling through Grasmere, because I insist we have to get some of the gingerbread still sold only in the little shop there, and there are the daffodils, a host of them, golden and fluttering, in the Wordsworth garden. We drive on and get on a boat trip round the top of Lake Windermere and we are thinking of Swallows And Amazons. We go to The World Of Beatrix Potter and nature seems to grow aprons and boots and ever-dirty hands and clothes. Of course, there are real rabbits out there. But it's hard not to see every rabbit as an adventurous little Peter whose jacket has been lost to a gooseberry net.

This is, very nearly, my children's first trip to the "Lake De Street", as they kept calling it. Our youngest is still scabby from chicken pox, and slightly irritable. We are staying a stone's throw from Lake Windermere, at the Briery Wood Hotel and one of the chief child pleasures of this establishment is the garden, with its rolling lawn, bushes to hide in, and a door, which is discovered in the wall by these small adventurers. This they call the secret door, and when prised open it leads out onto the busy A591. Once this hectic causeway is crossed, we wander down past the grand Langdale Chase Hotel to the lake and paddle in the shallow water of Windermere. There are rabbits everywhere in its terraced, manicured grounds. Perhaps, we theorise, they feel safer here, in grander surroundings, than they might in Mr McGregor's garden.

Actually I wasn't really much of a fan of Beatrix Potter until recently. The shaming and the punishment always took the edge away from the pleasure of the mischief, and I never wanted my children to feel they would be told off for getting dirty or losing their clothes. "Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor" is hardly the most comforting of lines. But then my youngest became more than a little bit obsessed with Peter Rabbit - not just the books but the animated television series - and it became clear that we had to visit The World Of Beatrix Potter. For me, this mini theme-world provides a revelation: a reminder of the charm of Potter's observations of nature, her real and intimate knowledge of the animals she portrayed.

Later we take the green cruise with Windermere Lake Cruises to the west shore, which feels like a different world from the busy east shore: less crowded and commercialised. Here there are no roads, no cars, only a scattering of walkers and visitors to the Victorian neo-Gothic Wray Castle. There, we play croquet on the lawn and romp around a nature play area involving tunnels and climbing ropes. It was Potter's first visits here when she was 16 that were the beginnings of her love affair with the Lake District, and this was also where she met Reverend Hardwicke Rawnsley with whom she would found the National Trust.

There are, of course, many places on Windermere where children's books are the last things on your mind. One is the Treetop Trek at Brockhole Lake District Visitor Centre - where all literary references are obliterated by adrenalin rush. When you're standing 30 feet off the ground on a rope, it's hard, even though you know you're attached by a harness to a wire above, to think of anything other than the art of balancing. Naturally, the kids, even the five-year-old, are much better at this than their parents. Naturally, they shame us with their ease, skill and confidence, while those parents quake. We try not to let on that we are as scared as rabbits caught in a gooseberry net. But it's obvious.

Meanwhile, what looks just as thrilling, is the new climbing area being erected just above the adventure playground. Called Treetop Nets, it looked rather like a series of giant trampolines and chutes in the trees. The first of its kind in the UK, it was erected by a team of seven ex-fishermen and sailors. (It actually opened this summer, following our visit.) My two boys marvel at it, like rabbits staring at Mr McGregor's carrot patch. I do too. One of the wonders of areas like the Lake District is the way people are always finding new ways to present nature as entertainment. Of course, you go there to be bowled over by the landscape. But there are always the ropes and wires of the human imagination too.

Vicky Allan and her family were guests at the Briery Wood Hotel, near Ambleside, www.lakedistrictcountryhotels.co.uk

Windermere Lake Cruises runs a number of different routes around Lake Windermere, www.windermere-lakecruises.co.uk

Treetop Trek (www.treetoptrek.co.uk) is one of many activities at Brockhole Lake District Visitor Centre, including treetop nets, minigolf and watersports, www.brockhole.co.uk

The World Of Beatrix Potter is at Bowness-on-Windermere, www.hop-skip-jump.com