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The Lost Boys: Santa Carla in Santa Cruz

Santa Carla, the vampire town of The Lost Boys (1987), is Santa Cruz, California: the Beach Boardwalk, the Giant Dipper coaster, the Municipal Wharf and the Pogonip clubhouse were all filmed in June 1986. The film's cave and bridge were shot far to the south, in Los Angeles County. The route follows Michael and Sam Emerson from the funfair to Max's video store, the railway trestle, the cave under the hotel and Grandpa's house, and marks which stops you can still visit.

6 locations3/6 visitable
BooksApproximate

Wolf Hall: From Putney to the Tower

Thomas Cromwell rises from a Putney childhood to become Henry VIII's most trusted minister, then falls in the same Tudor politics he mastered. Hilary Mantel's trilogy follows him from Cardinal Wolsey's household through the Reformation, Anne Boleyn's rise and execution, and his own last years. This route traces the places that anchor the story: Cromwell's birthplace and London house, Wolsey's palaces at York Place and Esher, the abbey where Wolsey died, Westminster Abbey for Anne's coronation, the Seymour seat that gives the novels their title, Hampton Court, and the Tower. The 2015 television adaptation used Dover Castle for the Tower of London and Penshurst Place for Whitehall.

9 locations7/9 visitable
MoviesApproximate

Perfect Days: Hirayama's Tokyo

Wim Wenders' Perfect Days follows Hirayama, a Tokyo toilet cleaner who keeps his days exactly the same: the same overalls, the same cassette tapes, the same sandwich under the trees. The city changes around him; he notices the light through the leaves. This route follows the film's real Tokyo, from the old apartment east of the Sumida to four of the Tokyo Toilet project's designer facilities, the shrine bench where he eats lunch, the sento and Asakusa bar that fill his evenings, and the bridge where the story ends.

9 locations9/9 visitable
MythologySpeculative

The Brothers Grimm: The German Fairy Tale Route

The German Fairy Tale Route runs from Hanau, where the Brothers Grimm were born, to Sababurg, nicknamed Sleeping Beauty Castle, the Pied Piper's Hamelin and the Musicians' Statue in Bremen. The brothers grew up poor, studied law and became librarians. The route follows the Fairy Tale Route from Hanau, where they were born, through the places they lived and worked, to Sleeping Beauty's castle and the Pied Piper's Hamelin, ending in Bremen with the animals' statue. The tale places are traditional associations, not the Grimms' own claims.

8 locations3/8 visitable
BooksApproximate

Three Men in a Boat: Kingston to Oxford

Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 comic novel sends three friends, J., George and Harris, and the dog Montmorency up the Thames in a rowing skiff, from Kingston to Oxford, camping out for a fortnight. What follows is one of the funniest books ever written about getting nowhere fast: a hedge maze with a guide who cannot find the exit, a punt run down at sunset, a dog who treats every cat as a personal enemy, and a provision-buying procession that staggers the whole town. The route follows the boat in the book's own order: Kingston's back streets, Hampton Court's maze, the lock opposite Weybridge where George joins them, the island where King John is said to have signed the Charter, tea below Cookham, a night in Marlow, Henley before the regatta, the old walls of Wallingford, and the difficult last mile into Oxford.

9 locations8/9 visitable
MoviesApproximate

Lion: Saroo's Long Way Home

In about 1986 a boy of five or six fell asleep on an empty train in central India and woke up nearly 1,500 kilometres away in Calcutta, unable to name his home town. Adopted by a couple in Tasmania, Saroo Brierley found his way back 25 years later by tracing railway lines on Google Earth. His memoir A Long Way Home became the 2016 film Lion, with Dev Patel as the grown-up Saroo and Nicole Kidman as his adoptive mother. The route follows the real journey, which the film tells closely, from Khandwa station to Burhanpur, Howrah and Hobart, and back to Khandwa. Family homes are private and not pinned.

7 locations2/7 visitable
Real JourneysApproximate

Nellie Bly: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days

Nellie Bly's 1889 record run began at a Hoboken pier, detoured to Jules Verne's house in Amiens, and crossed America by special train from San Francisco. The New York World reporter set out to turn Around the World in Eighty Days into fact and beat Phileas Fogg's record in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes. The route follows her book of 1890, stop by stop, with the dates from her own record. She went east by steamer and train, through the Suez Canal and the British ports of Asia.

9 locations9/9 visitable