The Hound of the Baskervilles: Across Dartmoor

The curse begins on paper. Dr Mortimer reads Holmes a family manuscript headed "Baskerville Hall" and dated 1742, which tells how the wild Hugo Baskerville and his companions carried off a yeoman's daughter one Michaelmas. Dartmoor has a candidate for the real Hugo: Richard Cabell of Brook Hall, believed to be the inspiration for him. Legend says a phantom pack of hounds came baying across the moor to howl at his tomb on the night he was buried. His mausoleum still stands at Buckfastleigh, an iron railing letting you look in on the chest tomb.

Location precision: Doyle said the story grew from a remark about a dog legend on the moor; Cabell is the traditional candidate, and the pin marks Holy Trinity churchyard at Buckfastleigh.

Visitor guidance: The Cabell family mausoleum, locally called the Sepulchre, is a listed building in the churchyard; the iron railing on its fourth side gives a view of the tomb.

Holmes sets the plan: they will meet at "the ten-thirty train from Paddington". He drives with Watson to the station and gives his last advice. He wants no theories, only facts "in the fullest possible manner", and will do the theorising himself. Sir Henry and Dr Mortimer have already secured a first-class carriage. Paddington has been the Great Western Railway's London terminus since 1838; Brunel's main line station opened in 1854, and trains still leave it for the South West of England.

Visitor guidance: A working main-line station on Praed Street; Great Western Railway trains to the South West leave from here.

At the little station where they get off, two men in dark uniforms lean on short rifles, and on a spur of the moor a mounted soldier watches the road. The driver explains: a convict has escaped from Princetown, three days ago. It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer, whose death sentence was commuted over doubts about his sanity. The prison is real. HM Prison Dartmoor stands in Princetown behind high granite walls, and Doyle stayed at the village's Duchy Hotel while researching the book, with Bertram Fletcher Robinson.

Location precision: The scene happens on the road from the station; the pin marks the Princetown prison Selden escaped from.

Visitor guidance: In the village, the Dartmoor Prison Museum (in the old prison dairy) and the National Park Visitor Centre (the former Duchy Hotel) are the places to visit.

Two high, narrow towers rise over the trees: Baskerville Hall. The lodge gates are topped with the boars' heads of the Baskervilles; the house has twin towers, black granite wings and a hall raftered with age-blackened oak, where Sir Henry says his people have lived for five hundred years. A new building at the lodge is the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold. The Hall exists only in the book. One scholar suggests it was based on one of three houses near Dartmoor, Hayford Hall near Buckfastleigh among them; another claim points to a house in Clyro, Wales.

Location precision: The Hall is invented; the pin marks Hayford Hall, one of three houses a scholar proposes as its model.

Stapleton points out the mire on the plain north of the Hall: "A false step yonder means death to man or beast." Only yesterday he saw a moor pony wander into it, and "He never came out." Still he claims he can find his way to its heart and back, to the hills that stand like islands cut off by the mire, where rare plants and butterflies grow. The mire is invented, but Fox Tor Mires, about a kilometre north-east of Fox Tor, is said to have inspired it, and the peat bog is still dangerous to walkers after heavy rain.

Location precision: Grimpen Mire is fictional; the pin marks Fox Tor, whose Fox Tor Mires lie about a kilometre to the north-east and are said to be the model.

Visitor guidance: A waymarked footpath crosses Fox Tor Mires, but the bog is dangerous after heavy rain; stay on the path.

Out on the moor the book keeps returning to the same landscape: grey rings of stone, the "homes of our worthy ancestors", and a black tor where Watson sees a solitary watcher. At night he and Sir Henry hear "a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl", and the baronet says: "it was the cry of a hound." Later Watson climbs the tor, sees prehistoric huts lying thickly on the hillsides, and waits in one for its tenant. Hound Tor is thought to have inspired Doyle: its summit blocks are weathered into shapes like dogs' heads, and Bronze Age hut circles lie to the south.

Location precision: The novel describes a black tor and its huts without a real name; Hound Tor is only one of the places thought to have inspired Doyle.

Visitor guidance: Hound Tor is within a few minutes of the B3387 between Bovey Tracey and Widecombe-in-the-Moor; the ruins of the medieval village of Hundatorra lie below it.

The trap closes at the Stapletons' home. Holmes, Watson and Lestrade crouch near Merripit House, watching Sir Henry and Stapleton at dinner, while a dense white fog from the Grimpen Mire creeps towards the house. Then out of the fog bounds "an enormous coal-black hound", flame in its jaws. Holmes empties five barrels of his revolver into its flank, and the glow turns out to be phosphorus. Stapleton, who kept the hound in the out-house at Merripit, is never seen again: Holmes concludes that he lies forever buried in the Grimpen Mire.

Location precision: Merripit House is invented and the book gives no real house as its model, so this stop has no pin.