With my stepping ashore I began the most unhappy part of my adventures.

Over the coming days and weeks, you'll have several ways to get into 'Kidnapped', exploring the world it describes and thinking about why this book is so darn good and still relevant to our world today. So here is the story for the 28th-29th June:

as a podcast: (as soon as I can work out how to do it properly you'll be able to subscribe to future podcasts in the far right column of the blog. Bear with me. It's kinda hard walking, recording & site building all at the same time.)

the full text online: (which I've put on a wiki so you you can edit and annotate it as much as you like; indeed, I'd *encourage* you to mess about so we can perhaps end the trip with our own "mashed-up" book.)

as a video: (which is currently being a bugger to upload so will appear soon I promise). I hope to make these vids downloadable for ipod users soon too. Again, bear with me...

It's here!:

Every day I'll read out the section of the book (abridged) in the location being described in that section. Today I'm on Earraid using Chapter 14 as my guide.

Because Stevenson has noted in the book that David gets to Queensferry on 24th August, it's quite simple to work back through the story day by day and conclude that the journey from Earraid must have started on 30th June, and that the shipwreck occurred on the night of the 26th June.

Actually I think my maths is better than Stevenson's since he appears to have lost a day somewhere along the way. Perhaps you can spot where this happens...

Comments

[Sarah]

Amazing that you did this! 'Kidnapped' was the most significant and exciting book from my childhood.... it's such an old friend I still keep reading it.
Have just found your site so I am looking forward to your journey. Great idea - something I would have loved to do also, but alas, older and live in Australia now!
Best of Luck in all you do,
Sarah

[timw]

Thanks Sarah! The latter parts of the journey aren't too strenuous for us oldies! Check out the maps and never rule out getting out there.

best wishes

timw

[D]

Hi there, I followed your walk blog in 2009 and still think it was a wonderful idea. Here's some information that might interest you, and a request.
1. In the MS (f. 111), opposite the first two paragraphs of chapter 20, Stevenson appears to calculate the distance travelled: One sum multiplies 30 by 13. Here, Stevenson may be speculating that his characters are traveling 13 miles for 30 days to a total of 390 miles. A second calculation multiplies 390 x 1.6, giving 624. The 1.6 converts miles to kilometers, giving a total of 624 kilometers. Does 390 miles sound about right to you?
2. I'm helping to write notes for an edition of Kidnapped: does that 30 days travel correspond to your calculations? Would it be possible to share your table of days and dates? You count 3 weeks in Rob Roy's house, but the text says they set off 'before a month', so could this not mean anything from 22 to 27 days? — if 26 days then the 56 days 30 June to 24 Aug would contain 30 days of travel.

[timw]

Hello D

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been rather leaving this site to slowly decay as various online services and account get shut down or disappear.

I did not know that Stevenson had made a little note like this. Very interesting!

I am a bit suspicious of his numbers having done the trip. The key sentence in the whole book is in Chapter 27:

"The brig was lost on June the 27th," says he, looking in his
book," and we are now at August the 24th.

With 3 days spent on Earraid, David starts travelling on 30th June. He spends 3 days in Cluny's Cage and finally gets to Rob's Roy House 0n 22 July.

It's true that it's not stated how long David stays there, but we do know that 5 further days of travel are described of David getting to Queensferry. Since he has to be there on 24th August, that means he set out from Rob Roy's House on 20th August. That's 29 days of rest (just under a month)

Stevenson himself gets a bit confused about how many days travel there are and what the date is. In the book, he seems rather keen to get David and Alan to Stirling Bridge on 23 Aug - the day Wallace was 'martyred'. I suspect this mission to be in Stirling on the 23rd is what confuses Stevenson's timeline in this section of the book whereby he then 'loses' a day between here and getting to South Queensferry (Mr Rankeillor claims it's the 24th when David turns up in Chapter 27 but logically it should be the 25th.)

My claim then would be that across 56 days there are in fact only 21 days of travel described in the book.

In terms of distance, total distance I have logged on my GPS tracker is just under 390 *kilometres* not miles. The longest days of walking (no boats) are 28k across the moor and 32k getting to Limekilns on the penultimate day.

The average distance across 21 days therefore is 18k.

Happy to go into more detail with you if you like. Really looking forward to seeing your new version of the book!

Best wishes

Tim