What you can walk, what is coming, and who you are going to meet.
Twelve stories, all on foot. All of them can be walked. Each has its own country, its own people and its own way of beginning. They are told here as far as they can be without spoiling anything: the rest is found by walking. A stop is a pause on the road: one comes every few kilometres, and you will never have to walk more than 4 km to find the next. Chapters are the big moments of the story.
To walk today
Homer
The Odyssey
A long walk home, by the long way.
1,150 km321 stops115 to 230 days on footThe first 36 km are free · the rest in the Mythic Epics Pack
You are Odysseus. You leave a city still burning and take the long way home. The route is walked in three acts, and each stands on its own. Each chapter leaves you an object and a question.
Where you begin
You begin on the shore at Troy, with one black ship and nineteen men aboard, including you. This is the sea of the Bronze Age: ships of sewn planks under a single sail. Smoke rises behind you, and you begin. What is at stake fits in one word: home.
In three acts
Act I · Smoke Behind You · 415 km
Nineteen chapters, from the last sail standing out of Troy to the night you tell a giant your name.
OdysseusProtagonist
“You are Odysseus, and you count nineteen men aboard, including you.”
The CiconesAntagonist
“The Cicones' neighbours come at dawn, which is what neighbours do.”
The Lotus-eatersOn the road
“The Lotus-eaters are not unkind.”
PolyphemusAntagonist
PoseidonPresence
AthenaWalks with you
EurylochusWalks with you
ElpenorWalks with you
Act II · Eleven Ships · 450 km
The wind is a gift until someone opens the bag. A floating island, a harbour with high walls, and the fleet that went in and did not come out.
AeolusOn the road
“On the last day Aeolus gives you a bag of ox-hide, tied with a silver cord, and tells you what is in it: every wind but the one that takes you home.”
EurylochusCompanion
CirceAntagonist
“Circe sits them on chairs with silver studs and mixes it herself where they can watch: grated cheese, barley meal, pale honey, strong wine.”
HermesOn the road
ElpenorCompanion
TiresiasPresence
AnticleaPresence
Act III · The Last One Left · 285 km
Everyone else is gone. Thirteen chapters, from an oar carried upright to a bed that cannot be moved.
CirceOn the road
“Circe walks down to the ship with her women carrying bread and meat and red wine, and she does not ask you to stay.”
EurylochusCompanion
CalypsoOn the road
“Calypso is kind.”
NausicaaOn the road
“Nausicaa gives you clothes and oil and food, and tells you to walk behind the cart rather than beside it, because of what people would say.”
AlcinousOn the road
ArgosCompanion
PenelopeOn the road
AthenaWalks with you
TelemachusWalks with you
Circe and Eurylochus appear in two acts: her part changes from one to the next; he stays at your side.
A long ride for those who have not given up on their reading.
900 km322 stops90 to 180 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics Pack
A long walk through dust and laughter and quiet sadness. A gentleman who read too much takes to the road with a borrowed name, a squire who did not ask to come, and the conviction that he is a knight. You walk beside him. Nine hundred kilometres and six acts.
Where you begin
A small house in La Mancha. He closes the book. He cannot close what it opened. The road out of the village begins as a field, with no gate to mark where the village ends, and the dust gets into everything by noon.
Who you will meet
Don QuixoteProtagonist
“He has noticed, and that, today, is enough: from here he answers only to Don Quixote de la Mancha.”
RocinanteCompanion
“The horse is Rocinante now, and will be for the rest of both their lives.”
Dulcinea del TobosoPresence
“In his letters, when he writes them, he will call her Dulcinea del Toboso.”
Sancho PanzaCompanion
“He answers, from today, to Sancho Panza.”
The housekeeperOn the road
“He goes into the kitchen and announces his intention to his housekeeper.”
360 km135 stops36 to 72 days on footPaid, once · Expeditions Pack
A stolen map sets a sea voyage in motion, then draws you into a struggle for a ship, a remote island and a buried fortune. Three hundred and sixty kilometres through intrigue, mutiny, survival and the long journey home, in a story shaped to unfold with your footsteps. You are the boy from the inn.
Where you begin
A clifftop path: three miles of wind, with no one between you and the inn. Then the inn above the bay, its sign rattling out of time with the sea. An old sailor arrives with a heavy sea chest, and one guest turns a quiet inn into a lookout post.
Who you will meet
Jim HawkinsProtagonist
“He asks your name, then repeats it slowly: Jim Hawkins.”
Billy BonesOn the road
“His own, Billy Bones, he gives once and grudgingly.”
Doctor LiveseyCompanion
“Doctor Livesey, who tends him, warns him that rum may finish what illness has begun.”
Blind PewAntagonist
Squire TrelawneyOn the road
“You go looking for Doctor Livesey and end up before him and a wealthy country squire named Trelawney.”
Captain SmollettOn the road
“Squire Trelawney has bought a fine ship and hired an experienced captain, Smollett.”
Long John SilverAntagonist
“At a tavern you meet the ship's cook: Long John Silver, as half the room hails him.”
45 km22 stops5 to 15 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics Pack
In one long night, three spirits show a miserly counting-house owner his past, the present he ignores and the future his choices are building. Here the miser is you, and the night is crossed a kilometre at a time. It is the shortest route in the library: forty-five kilometres.
Where you begin
The counting-house of Scrooge and Marley, kept cold on principle: coal costs money, and warmth, by your reckoning, buys nothing back. The ledger is balanced; the heart is not. And upstairs a window latch rattles with no wind to blame.
Who you will meet
ScroogeProtagonist
“You keep the counting-house of Scrooge and Marley cold on principle: coal costs money, and warmth, by your reckoning, buys nothing back.”
FredOn the road
“Your nephew Fred appears at the door, ruddy with the weather and the season, inviting you to Christmas dinner as he does every year, and you refuse him as you do every year.”
An original mystery for walkers. You set out after a rumour: a library that appears only to those who keep moving. Over sixty kilometres, twenty chapters and twenty small objects, you trace a path no map records.
Where you begin
The outskirts of Vellichor, in the rain. You set out without an address, with only the rumour. The road forks where the rain ends, beside a stone wrapped in moss that bears the carved outline of an open book. It is a road that only goes one way, even when you turn back.
Who you will meet
YouProtagonist
“A road that only goes one way, even when you turn back.”
The boy with the appleCompanion
“A small boy is sitting beneath the stone, eating an apple slowly.”
The innkeeperOn the road
“The innkeeper casts no shadow, and serves excellent bread.”
A hundred and twenty kilometers between a promise and its price
120 km48 stops12 to 24 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics Pack
Walk alongside an eleventh-century northern Scottish kingdom as a loyal warrior lets himself be persuaded, step by step, by a promise he never asked for. You cross moors and fortified households, one step behind Macbeth.
Where you begin
You begin on the open moor, on the road back from the front, in rain nobody stops for. Near Forres smoke still clings to the trampled grass, and among the soldiers Macbeth's name is repeated with respect: proven loyalty, courage without calculation. No one mentions ambition yet. Further on, where the road disappears into fog, three unmoving shapes wait.
Who you will meet
MacbethProtagonist
“Macbeth keeps staring at that empty space longer than the moment seems to deserve.”
BanquoCompanion
“Banquo is promised something stranger still, a promise that benefits not him but those who come after him.”
DuncanOn the road
“Duncan, informed from a distance, promises honors to both before the blood has fully dried.”
Three figuresPresence
“Three unmoving shapes wait where the road disappears into fog.”
MalcolmOn the road
“Duncan, grateful for the recent victory, praises Macbeth in front of everyone, and in that same speech names his son Malcolm as heir to the throne.”
Lady MacbethCompanion
“Lady Macbeth receives him with flawless courtesy, attentive to every detail of protocol, nothing in her bearing revealing the weight of the letter she read hours earlier.”
A small traveller, a map under the floorboards, a long road east
1,200 km330 stops120 to 240 days on footPaid, once · Original Fantasy Pack
You are a hearthling: small, quiet, unremarkable. Your grandmother dies and leaves a parchment map under a loose floorboard: a road, a city no one remembers, and a single hand-drawn flame at the end of it. Twelve hundred kilometres, six acts, and a name you are walking to remember.
Where you begin
Aldermay Hollow, your kitchen, on the morning after the funeral. Beneath the third floorboard in from the hearth is a folded square of parchment, marked with three things: a road, a city, and a single hand-drawn flame. You take the brass tinder-box she gave you when you were seven, and which you have never lit, and by dusk you are on the road. You do not lock the door.
600 km210 stops60 to 120 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics PackIn Spanish only
A banished knight rides out of Castile with sixty lances and no money. You walk within his host. Six hundred kilometres of dust, loyalty and justice in the first great Castilian poem, adapted to be covered on foot.
Where you begin
You begin at the house in Vivar, with a proclamation that allows no answer: nine days to leave the king's land. In the yard those who ride out are counted by pennons, and there are sixty. Rodrigo Díaz stops on the threshold and looks back: the doors standing wide open, without bolts, the perches without falcons, the chests empty. You pick up from the ground the key nobody is going to use, because someone has to carry it.
A long descent beneath a surface that is no longer yours
1,100 km336 stops110 to 220 days on footPaid, once · Expeditions PackIn English only
You are a naturalist drawn into the pursuit of an impossible sea creature, only to discover a machine that has abandoned the nations above. It is a measured descent, where every kilometre carries you farther from the surface.
Where you begin
You begin in a Paris archive, with a damaged shipping report on your desk: three pages, one badly torn, describing a collision no captain will explain in writing. No wreck, no survivors, no wound anyone can point to on a chart. You have spent a career classifying what the sea sends up; this account classifies nothing. Whatever struck that hull was moving with purpose.
Who you will meet
Pierre AronnaxProtagonist
“You have spent a career classifying what the sea sends up; this account classifies nothing.”
Ned LandCompanion
“Ned Land has fished every ocean that pays well and trusts none of the reports you have brought aboard to justify this voyage.”
ConseilCompanion
“It opens from within without ceremony, admitting you, Conseil, and the harpooner into a hull that answers to no navy and flies no flag you recognise.”
Captain NemoAntagonist
“Captain Nemo names each dish's true origin only after you have finished it, visibly pleased by your inability to tell the difference.”
1,200 km304 stops80 to 200 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics Pack
Follow the shadow of the Count from his mountain fortress in the Carpathians, through the dark forests of Transylvania. You walk in Jonathan Harker's footsteps. A journey of 1,200 kilometres through fog, history and dread.
Where you begin
You begin at the railway terminus at Bistritz, a small stone building with a single platform and a painted clock that runs five minutes fast. Across the cobbled square the lantern of the Golden Krone Hotel throws orange light on the stone pavement, and the innkeeper's wife, trembling, presses a rosary with a crucifix into Jonathan Harker's gloved hand and begs him not to continue north. He thanks her and departs on the night coach. The road to the Borgo Pass climbs between walls of black pine.
Who you will meet
Jonathan HarkerProtagonist
“Jonathan Harker descends from the night train into the last warm evening he will know for some time.”
The coachmanOn the road
“Low in the roadside ditch, blue flames flutter without any visible source, and the coachman refuses to stop for them.”
Every step descends beyond the last hope of return
1,100 km337 stops110 to 220 days on footPaid, once · Literary Classics Pack
You are the pilgrim who lost the path at the edge of a dark wood, and there is no way forward except down. Guided by a shade who has walked this ground before, you descend through circle after circle of an ancient, deliberately built underworld. Justice, memory and compassion are tested at every step.
Where you begin
You begin in the dark wood, and the way behind you has already closed. You do not remember losing the path, only that it is gone. The trees close ranks behind you, trunk after trunk, until the direction you came from means nothing at all, and low mist moves without wind. Somewhere ahead the ground seems to lighten, and you start toward it out of habit more than hope.
Who you will meet
DanteProtagonist
“You do not remember deciding to keep walking, either.”
VirgilCompanion
“You have been standing still long enough to feel foolish about it when Virgil separates himself from the tangle of roots ahead, moving the way someone moves when a place holds no surprises left for them.”
Farinata degli UbertiPresence
“Your guide gives you the name once the voice has quieted: Farinata degli Uberti.”
A gentleman, a wager, a watch, a road that goes all the way around
2,865 km814 stops280 to 580 days on footPaid, once · Expeditions Pack
A precise man in London bets that he can circle the world in eighty days and leaves his club with a leather case. You walk it beside him: 2,865 kilometres across eight acts. Trains, steamships and a detective who has the wrong man.
Where you begin
A club in Pall Mall, at a quarter past eleven on a Wednesday. Phileas Fogg folds his newspaper and bets the table he can be back in this exact armchair at a quarter to nine on the evening eighty days from now, having gone around the world in the meantime. The table accepts the wager with the polite eagerness of men who do not believe him. He has been a precise man all his life, and the world is not a precise place.
Who you will meet
Phileas FoggProtagonist
“He has been a precise man all his life.”
PassepartoutCompanion
“They drive to Charing Cross in a silence that the Frenchman, two hours into employment, has not yet decided is comfort or coldness.”
FixAntagonist
“Fix watches from the rail of the steamer, a newspaper he is not reading held open in one hand.”
AoudaCompanion
“The Frenchman calls her madam, and means it with more warmth than the word usually carries.”
OdysseusProtagonist
The CiconesAntagonist
The Lotus-eatersOn the road
PolyphemusAntagonist
PoseidonPresence
AthenaWalks with you
EurylochusWalks with you
ElpenorWalks with you
AeolusOn the road
EurylochusCompanion
CirceAntagonist
HermesOn the road
ElpenorCompanion
TiresiasPresence
AnticleaPresence
CirceOn the road
EurylochusCompanion
CalypsoOn the road
NausicaaOn the road
AlcinousOn the road
ArgosCompanion
PenelopeOn the road
AthenaWalks with you
TelemachusWalks with you
