Walk Kidnapped, across the Highlands
Shipwrecked, wanted for a murder he only saw, and on the run with a Jacobite outlaw. Your everyday steps follow David Balfour and Alan Breck through the heather, and Stevenson's words unlock where it happened.
- 200 miles
- 9 stops
- Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
The flight in the heather
Shipwrecked, and wanted for a murder he only watched, David Balfour crosses the Highlands on foot with a Jacobite outlaw he does not entirely trust. Two hundred miles of heather and hillside, every one of them at the pace of a man who cannot risk the roads.
David Balfour is washed ashore on Erraid, a tidal islet off Mull, and walks across Mull and Morven into Appin. There he sees a real killing, the Appin Murder of 1752, in which the government agent Colin Campbell was shot and a Stewart was hanged for it on evidence that convinced nobody. From then on he and Alan Breck Stewart, a real man too, are fugitives.
They cross Glencoe, crawl over Rannoch Moor with soldiers on the skyline, hide in Cluny's Cage on Ben Alder and reach the Forth at last, where David can claim his inheritance. It's two hundred miles of real Highland country, and Stevenson knew it well. Bematist walks it on a real map, at the pace of two men who can't risk the roads.
- Distance
- 200 miles (322 km)
- Stops
- 9, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- The real world, on Apple Maps
- Text
- Robert Louis Stevenson; Project Gutenberg ebook #421
Where it starts
With my stepping ashore I began the most unhappy part of my adventures. It was half-past twelve in the morning, and though the wind was broken by the land, it was a cold night. I dared not sit down (for I thought I should have frozen), but took off my shoes and walked to and fro upon the sand, bare-foot, and beating my breast with infinite weariness. There was no sound of man or cattle; not a cock crew, though it was about the hour of their first waking.
Kidnapped, Chapter XIV · The Islet
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 8 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would the Highlands take you?
David and Alan were on the run for weeks. At true scale on everyday walks it's a couple of months. Or pick your own finish and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
9 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out for the Forth.
200 miles of Kidnapped, on the walks you already take.
- For iPhone
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