Catalog
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was fought at Port Arthur, on the Yalu River, at Mukden and in the Tsushima Strait, and ended at Portsmouth, Maine. This route follows the war from the first night attack on Port Arthur in February 1904 to the peace treaty signed in September 1905. Battlefields are pinned approximately; only the Mikasa and the Portsmouth shipyard are exact.
The Salem witch trials of 1692 began in Salem Village (now Danvers), reached the Witch House and Proctor's Ledge in Salem, and are remembered today at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead and the Salem memorial. More than 200 people were accused, thirty were found guilty and nineteen were hanged. This route follows the story from the Parris household and the Nurse farm to the magistrate's house, the execution site and the 1992 memorial park. The Parsonage stop is approximate and has no map pin.
Stand by Me moves King's Castle Rock from Maine to Oregon: Rob Reiner shot the 1986 film in Brownsville, along the Row River railway and at a California trestle. Four boys walk out of town to find a missing boy's body, and the trip changes them. This route follows the film in story order, from Brownsville's Main Street and the treehouse to the saloon and diner where the trip is set in motion, the Row River Trail bridge near Cottage Grove, a Junction City general store, the 80-foot trestle above Lake Britton and the Calapooia River bridge where the boys part. Most stops are in Oregon; the trestle is in California.
Hocus Pocus is set in Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween, and filmed at Pioneer Village, Salem Common, the Ropes Mansion and Old Town Hall. The route follows the film from the 1693 prologue at Pioneer Village through the high school on Essex Street, Salem Common, Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, Max's house on Ocean Avenue and the Ropes Mansion, then to the town party at Old Town Hall and the Park Plaza Hotel ballroom in Los Angeles. Most Salem scenes are exteriors; the interiors were studio work in Burbank.
Red Dead Redemption 2 follows the Van der Linde gang in 1899 across five invented U.S. states, with Saint Denis built on New Orleans and Guarma reached on a ship bound for Cuba. This route follows the main story from Blackwater to Saint Denis and an island beyond. Pins mark only places the sources name; the rest stay unpinned and keep their place in the sequence.
The Travels of Marco Polo runs from Venice and Acre to Kublai Khan's Xanadu, then south to Hangzhou and home again. In 1271 a seventeen-year-old Venetian set out with his father and uncle and did not come home for 24 years. The route follows the book from Venice and Acre to the Persian Gulf, across the Pamir highlands and the desert to Kublai's summer and winter capitals, south to Hangzhou and the port of Zayton, and home again. Some of the roads are reconstructed by scholars, and Polo sometimes exaggerates, so each stop notes where the evidence is thin.
When the National Trust withdrew filming permission, Monty Python's Grail quest leaned on Doune Castle in Scotland for Camelot, Castle Anthrax and most other castles, with Kidwelly Castle in South Wales for the opening shot and Bodiam Castle in East Sussex for the Swamp Castle exterior. King Arthur sets out across Britain in AD 932 to find knights and, in the end, the Holy Grail. This route follows the quest in film order through six locations: the castle of the opening shot in Wales, Doune Castle in Scotland standing in for the rest, a moated castle in East Sussex for one establishing shot, a mine, a glen and the island tower that ends the film.
King Arthur's legend has no single home: he is conceived at Tintagel and holds court at Caerleon, Cadbury Castle is claimed as Camelot and Glastonbury is linked to Avalon. The route follows Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory and others from Merlin's dragons to the sword returned to the water. Every pin marks a real place that tradition has attached to an episode, not a site proven by history, and each stop says where the link is doubted.
The Hound of the Baskervilles takes Sherlock Holmes across Dartmoor: Cabell's tomb at Buckfastleigh, the ten-thirty train from Paddington, Princetown's prison and Hound Tor. A spectral hound stalks the moor. The route runs from the grave that may have inspired the legend and the ten-thirty train from Paddington to the convict prison at Princetown, the mire, the tors and the Stapletons' house. Baskerville Hall and Merripit House exist only in the book, so their pins mark a stand-in or nothing at all.
A chance meeting at the Criterion Bar sends an army doctor just back from Afghanistan to a laboratory at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where a stranger grips his hand and observes: "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." Within days Dr Watson has moved into 221B Baker Street, the address where many of the stories begin, and off runs the canon: four novels and 56 short stories, all but one set between 1880 and 1914. This route walks Holmes's London in the order the stories appeared: the Criterion where Watson met Stamford, the hospital of the famous first deduction, the Baker Street rooms that did not exist when Doyle wrote and are now a museum, Scotland Yard's Victorian headquarters on the Embankment, a society church where a bride vanishes, a silent club on Pall Mall, and the Underground station where a body fell from a train roof.