Enid Blyton visited Swanage three times a year for 20 years, and her love of Dorset flows through her stories – from treacherous seas and smugglers’ Passageways to forbidden islands and enchanting ruins. It’s a landscape of mystery and intrigue, and the potential for adventure is just as real now as it was 70 years ago. Corfe Castle, Hartland Moor and Brownsea Island will certainly fire up the imaginations of Famous Five fans, and there’s plenty of evidence that Blyton used these, and other real locations as inspiration for her fictional Kirrin Castle, Mystery Moor and Whispering Island. Never ones to pass on an adventure, Anne, Dick, Julian, George and Timmy were an intrepid bunch, and what better way to follow in the plucky footsteps of the Famous Five than to explore their stomping ground in true buccaneer fashion – by steam train, bus and boat.

START Arrive by train into Wareham and catch a bus to Corfe Castle. Look out for Hartland Moor and the abandoned railway line, possibly an inspiration behind the fog-covered heathland in Five Go to Mystery Moor. Get off at Castle View, cross the road and follow a footpath to the village.

CORFE CASTLE While Kirrin Island was allegedly based on one of the Channel Islands, the description of the ruined Norman castle (with battlements complete with nesting ravens, an overgrown well and dungeons) is undeniably close to Corfe, which has an eventful history. In 978AD King Edward the Martyr was murdered here by his stepmother who wished to place her son, Ethelred the Unready, on the throne. William the Conqueror began work on the current castle in 1066, and it changed hands over the next 600 years until parliamentarians demolished it in 1646, leaving it in the state you see today. Back in the village, Ginger Pop Shop is packed to the rafters with Enid Blyton memorabilia. Proprietor and lifelong Blyton fan Vivienne Endecott offers walking tours around the castle.

SWANAGE Catch the steam train into Swanage from Corfe Castle station. Blyton first came to Dorset in 1931, but her regular visits to Swanage started 10 years later with her daughter Gillian. For the next 20 years Blyton and her husband Kenneth enjoyed regular holidays, playing golf and swimming around the pier before supper at the Grosvenor Hotel.

POOLE HARBOUR Catch a boat from Swanage Pier to Poole Harbour, stopping at Brownsea Island. If you ignore the fact that the harbour is salt water, it’s nearly identical to the description of Whispering Island in Five Have a Mystery to Solve. Now owned by the National Trust, in Blyton’s day the reclusive Mrs Bonham-Christie owned the island and would not tolerate visitors, allowing the island to become wild and overgrown. Brownsea Island reserves its own place in the history of adventure – as the birthplace of the Scout Movement. In 1907 Robert Baden-Powell held his first camp here, and more than 100 years later the island is still enjoyed by Scouts and Guides from around the world. From Poole, catch a bus or train back to Wareham and round off the day in true Famous Five style, with lashings of ginger beer.