The Cursing Stone

Author/Guide: Adrian Harvey

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Not every journey has an end….

ISBN: 978-1911129189
Genre: Fantasy/Sci Fi, Folklore

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What you need to know before your trail

‘Oh come now, Mr Buchanan. When one goes out into the world, one always ends up smelling of something or other.’ Fergus Buchanan has led a charmed life: a doting family, a loving sweetheart and the respect of his neighbours. All is as it should be and nothing stands between him and the limitless happiness that is his destiny. But then he is sent from his remote island to retrieve the cursing stone, and his adventures in the wild world beyond cause him to question everything he thought he knew. Succeed or fail, nothing will be the same again. This modern quest is a story of courage, duty and revenge, of family ties and loves lost and found, of dragons and postcode

Locations

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Travel Guide

Adrian Harvey guides you on the journey of The Cursing Stone:

The book starts on an imagined island off the west coast of Scotland: a tiny, sleepy, insular sort of island. It’s based on a real island, just beyond Rum in the Small Isles, blended with a mythic island from the time of St Columba called Hinba. In many ways, it’s more Hinba and hence that’s what it’s called in the book.

Canna – the island on which my island of Hinba is based. It’s only 5 miles long, but it has at least 3 amazing archaeological sites, and plenty of other bits of rock to keep you occupied, including the cliffs where puffins and eagles nest.

Mallaig – you can only really get to Canna through the small port of Mallaig, and it acts in the story as a physical and metaphoric gateway between the charmed realm of Hinba and the outside world.

Rannoch Moor – The Moor is massive and overwhelming, a mass of peat bog, streams and frankly desolate beauty. I’ve walked across it, which is the best way to experience it, but the train line from Glasgow to Fort William cuts across it and is one of the most stunning stretched of track in the UK. Waking up on the Sleeper at peering out into early morning vastness is sublime.

Glasgow – Glasgow is a fabulous city, which I’ve visited far too infrequently. But it was only the last time, when I was researching the book that I made it to the centre of the old city, well away from the shops of Sauchiehall Street – and in particular the Necropolis, an amazing hilltop burial ground.

The Barbican – I love London, and one of my favourite parts is the arc of districts around the northern edge of the City – from Clerkenwell across to Shoreditch. The Barbican rises incredibly from a mesh of medieval alleys and Georgian lanes, and is one of those places where all of the city’s history overlaps: it was the main gateway to Roman London, was a railway good yard until destroyed by fire bombs in the Second World War, and is now flats and an arts centre; there is a church within development (St Giles Cripplegate) that leaves the ground as a Norman building but is Georgian by the time you get to the top of the bell tower; and the area is still building site, adding new layers to ancient ones. Plus there are some of best pubs in the city within a stone’s throw.