# Bematist: Walk the Stories

> Bematist is a step counter for iPhone that walks you down the real route of a classic book. Your everyday steps, read from Apple Health, move you along the road the story takes, and when you reach a place from the book, the original passage written about that place unlocks.

Website: https://getbematist.com/
Platform: iPhone (iOS). Not available on Android.
Made by: Bluemind Software.

## How it works

- Pick a book from the library. Each one is a journey along the route the story takes: Jonathan Harker's road from Munich to the Borgo Pass in Dracula, Troy to Ithaca in the Odyssey, Baker Street to Dartmoor in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
- Walk as you normally do. Bematist reads steps and walking distance from Apple Health (iPhone and Apple Watch). There is nothing to start or stop, and walks taken with the app closed still count.
- Reach a stop and its passage unlocks, word for word from an original public-domain edition, shown under a hand-tinted plate. Stops you haven't reached show the distance to go ("3.4 miles away, about a day at the pace you walk"), not a paywall.

## Key facts

- Pace: you choose when to finish (in three days, a week, a month, or your own setting). Bematist scales the route to your own 30-day walking average, so a 3,958-mile Odyssey fits into ordinary days. The pace is fixed for the whole journey.
- Real maps: routes with real geography are drawn on Apple Maps; imaginary ones (Oz, Inferno, Alice in Wonderland) on a hand-drawn map.
- The text: every passage is verbatim from a public-domain edition, with the translator named. An in-app reader lets you read on from wherever you've walked to.
- Library: a new book is added every month, chosen by walkers' vote. Books include The Odyssey, Dracula, Moby-Dick, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Frankenstein, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Tale of Two Cities, Around the World in Eighty Days, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Inferno, The Canterbury Tales, Three Men in a Boat, The Call of the Wild, The Count of Monte Cristo, Kidnapped, Don Quixote and The Travels of Marco Polo.
- Walk together: send an invite link and friends join the same road, each shown as a coloured dot, wherever they live. Everyone in a party walks at the same pace.
- Sharing: every arrival and every finished book can be shared as an image card.
- No streaks: a quiet day never resets progress. Progress only moves forward.
- Privacy: no account, no sign-up, no email. Step history stays on the iPhone. Walking together shares only the name you choose, the book, the pace and your position on the route.
- Also: Home Screen widgets (today's steps, steps to your next stop), a notification the morning you should arrive at the next place, several books under way at once, colour or monochrome plates, reader text size and paper (parchment, white, sepia, night), light and dark appearance.

## Compared with virtual walking challenges

Virtual walking challenges give you a route and a badge. Bematist gives you a book: the route is the one the story takes, and the reward at each stop is the passage written about that place.

## The name

A bematist (Greek βηματιστής, "one who paces") was a surveyor who measured distance by counting his steps. Alexander the Great's army marched with bematists to measure the known world.

## Book pages

- [Dracula](https://getbematist.com/walk/dracula): Jonathan Harker's road east, Munich to the Borgo Pass, 656 miles.