Featuring camping, exploring, sailing and piracy, the book was first published in 1930 and has inspired generations of campers and sailors ever since.

The new film, shot near some of the Club’s most picturesque sites, retains the much-loved Lakeland setting but brings the story into the 1930s and includes some elements drawn from Ransome’s own adventurous life.

Directed by British film-maker Philippa Lowthorpe and starring Rafe Spall, Kelly Macdonald and Andrew Scott, the film was shot in the Lake District, Yorkshire and Scotland. Among the locations was Derwentwater, where the Club runs Keswick and Derwentwater Club Sites.

Producer Nick O’Hagan said: “All of these places in the story are known and identifiable places on the water, and it felt vital that we do that. There’s nowhere else in England that looks quite like it, and we wanted to capture that.”

Lowthorpe agreed: “It’s an iconic landscape: it’s epic, it’s wonderful, it feels otherworldly, and it was incredibly important to me that we film a lot of it there.”

Lake Coniston and Derwentwater took turns to become Ransome’s legendary lake, with a camera boat capturing the duels between the Walkers’ Swallow and Amazon, piloted by ruthless pirates Nancy and Peggy Blackett.

The film-makers hope that audiences will be inspired to set out on their own family adventures after seeing the film. Lowthorpe said: “I think it brings a wonderful sense of freedom and adventure to children - a message from the past to the present about how we bring up our children, making us aware of another way of enjoying ourselves out in the open; sailing or climbing or camping or any of these things which are almost for free and which are nothing to do with technology.”

There are eight Club Sites in the Lake District, including Derwentwater and Keswick.