The idea that this adventure might be seen as some kind of reality TV show upsets me (but only slightly, Trevor, and I know what you mean). If that is how it looks, it means I’m not really doing justice to the original impulse for this trip.

And what was that impulse? Well it came from reading a passage in Chapter 24 (or 24th August, as we call it):

“The brig was lost on June the 27th,” says he, looking in his book, “and we are now at August the 24th. Here is a considerable hiatus, Mr. Balfour, of near upon two months. It has already caused a vast amount of trouble to your friends; and I own I shall not be very well contented until it is set right.”

This is the only time in the whole book that Stevenson mentions precise dates, and it intrigued me. Did this mean that the whole book is written with these dates in mind? If you chunked up the text into the moments when night falls or day breaks and charted it from the moment of the shipwreck, would the timeline be precise?

And if the timeline *was* precise, what about the geography? Would it be possible to move from place to place mentioned in the book within the time allowed?

I’m far enough in to believe that Stevenson did have it in mind that this was an adventure that really could be done. In fact, the only thing really slowing me down is documenting the trip for you lot in a transmedia-stylee:

Remember, though, that he was writing this book from the relevant comfort of Bournemouth, and years aways from when he himself actually roamed the Highlands as a kid.

In a very great way then, ‘Kidnapped’ is a book driven both by childhood memory (what I did) and imaginative projection (what I would like to do, or perhaps what I would have liked to do); it’s right in the sweet spot for a walker in a valley looking up to the peaks and imagining leaping from rock to rock (a la Sonic, mebbe?)

The good news is that Adam has made me an introduction to a Stevenson expert in Edinburgh who should be able to set me straight on these musings about how a book gets written.

It’s just a shame that I’ll have to wait til August 24th to meet him (aka my personal Mr Rankeillor).

*Please note all the Kidnapped posts have been transferred here from the original blog at https://timwright.typepad.com/kidmapper which no longer exists.

I have archived the comments from the original site but have not included them here. If you have any queries about this project, do get in touch.