the welsh travel line has the bus routes and all the stops and the journey times along the route.

bus companies don't make it easy on their sites as you have to know where the bus goes rather than the site returning a place near to where you want to go. some even make it impossible to find out wher a bus route goes if youdon't have a map of the area. best way is to plug in a town that looks like it has buses and just see where they go - that is if they can be bothered to produce a map of the route.

I did a 4 day trip to the Lakes a couple of weeks ago from London

1) Train to Victoria, and tube to Euston. (1.5hrs~)
2) Euston to Penrith (direct or change at Crewe) (5 hrs or so)
3) Penrith rail station to Glenridding via 108 bus (40 mins~)
4) Walk to campsite, or straight into the hills (10 mins~)

So it was quite easy and fairly cheap, the only thing that peeved me off a bit was waiting around for connections. Next time I'll try to make sure all my trains are direct as the change at Crewe was a bit dodgy - only had a few mins to swap trains.

Also the train and bus times differ on weekday and weekends, so I planned the inward/return trains based on the least amount of time I would have to wait around for connections  

Make sure you look around for cheaper tickets, the websites I looked at all had differing prices for the same ticket.

I'll probably do this route again soon as it was good fun

Nick,

if you change trains at Lancaster it gives you more options for entry to the lakes. You can go to,

Foxfield (Broughton-in-Furness) for SW Lakes

Ravenglass for Eskdale

Drigg for Wasdale

Windermere

Penrith for NW Lakes

when you going rocky?