David Nicholls has warned his fans not to attempt to visit the locations in his new novel. While those who loved the hit Netflix adaptation of Nicholls’ novel One Day have been able to visit locations from the series, such as the Lewisham pizza joint Bella Roma or Charlton Lido, the locations in You Are Here “are genuinely all made up”, the author said.

The novel, which was published last month and follows a midlife couple as they hike through the Lake District, contain a disclaimer from the author explaining that while he has “tried to describe the landscape as accurately as possible, the pubs, hotels and restaurants along the way are all entirely fictional”, and he has also “taken a few small liberties with the route”.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys, Nicholls said that on the first night of their trip his characters stay in a pub “on the shores of a lake – that pub doesn’t exist”.

“Don’t try and book it because it really doesn’t exist,” he said. “They might have been inspired by a stay somewhere else but they’re not real places.”

Nicholls, who is known for writing romantic fiction such as One Day and Starter For Ten, also said he would now “find it really hard to write a novel which was entirely about 20- or 30-somethings dating – which is strange because when I began my career that’s largely what I was writing.”

The author has been with his partner, Hannah Weaver, for more than 20 years and said having not “been on a date since 1997”, the modern dating world of apps seems “such a different experience, in many ways so much more direct and frank” than what he experienced.

“There was a random quality to meeting someone back then. You went to a lot of dinner parties in the hope you might be sat next to somebody. It was very random and unlikely that something would happen, and now there’s a frankness and directness – there are tools, for want of a better word.”

Being so unfamiliar with that world, it would not be “something I’m sure I could ever write about”, he said. “Especially when I meet so many brilliant younger writers who are writing about it really well.”

• This article was amended on 26 May 2024 to remove an incorrect personal detail.