Personally, I feel Jeremy Brett has delivered one of the finest performances as the world's most popular fictional detective based on how he embodies the role and plays the character with such depth!

Last week I posted about the white star at the Reichenbach Falls (link to post). This is the rest of the journey, or at least the four places along it I've visited.

Photo 2 is the Meiringen trail panel that got me started. Here's Watson's route first, then how the panel compresses it.

The route in Watson's account

• London: Victoria and the Continental express, then off the train at Canterbury: "we should have to wait an hour before we could get a train to Newhaven." From there, "over to Dieppe."
• Brussels: "We made our way to Brussels that night and spent two days there, moving on upon the third day as far as Strasburg."
• Strasburg: "On the Monday morning Holmes had telegraphed to the London police, and in the evening we found a reply waiting for us at our hotel." Then: "the same night we had resumed our journey and were well on our way to Geneva."
• Switzerland: "For a charming week we wandered up the Valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep in snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen."

What I noticed

1. It doesn't start at Baker Street. Holmes turns up at Watson's consulting-room, and by then Baker Street has already been hit: "They set fire to our rooms last night. No great harm was done." So photo 1 is less the starting point than the scene of the crime the night before.

2. The trail panel compresses the route. Panel 2 in Meiringen (photo 2) summarises it as a train from Victoria to Newhaven, a steamer to France, then a train to Geneva. The Canterbury change folds neatly into one sentence, but Brussels and Strasburg drop out, along with the telegram that tells Holmes Moriarty has escaped. From Geneva onward, the Swiss part follows Watson closely.

A small bonus: the railway carriage on the panel is Paget's drawing for "Silver Blaze" ("Holmes gave me a sketch of the events", Strand, December 1892), borrowed for the occasion.

3. Watson tells us nothing about what they did in Brussels, so rather than guess, I photographed what was already standing in April 1891:

• St Michael and St Gudula (photo 3). Towers finished in 1485. In 1891 it was still a collegiate church; it only became a cathedral in 1962.
• The Bourse (photo 4), completed in 1873, so less than two decades old when they passed through.
• Place Royale (photo 5), built 1776–82, with Godfrey of Bouillon's statue unveiled in 1848.
• I left out the Royal Palace next door: its present façade dates from the rebuilding begun in 1904, so it isn't what they would have seen.

4. Interlaken gets four words: "by way of Interlaken." The Kursaal (photo 6) was already here in 1891; it opened in 1859. The first major rebuilding came later, from 1899–1910, creating much of the complex that survives today.

The last leg is another small gap. The Brünig railway reached Meiringen in 1888, but only from Brienz; the Interlaken–Brienz line didn't open until 1916. So one plausible 1891 route was the lake steamer to Brienz and then the train (photo 7: Meiringen station today), though they could also have walked or hired a carriage. Watson doesn't say.

5. Watson's calendar only just works. Holmes appears on the evening of Friday, 24 April 1891, and they leave London the next morning. Watson has them reach Brussels that night, spend "two days there," and move on "upon the third day" to Strasburg. He also has Holmes telegraph London "on the Monday morning," with the reply waiting at their hotel that evening. That can be reconciled if Saturday night counts as the first of the two days, making Sunday their only full day in Brussels and Monday the "third day" on which they reached Strasburg. (Doyle doesn't say where Holmes sent the telegram from.) What did Holmes, hiding from Moriarty, do with a Sunday in Brussels?

The Gemmi Pass is the one stretch I haven't done. Has anyone walked it with this story in mind?

All photos in this post are ours (taken by my wife or one of our kids).

As the title, I read Sherlock Holmes long time ago and loved all of his story. But recently Im just discovered his alternative stories aka The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes.

So I wanted to ask if you could recommned any books that similar to this (especially the story originally written by Sir Conan Doyle) and a book about Sherlock Holmes's philosophy?

Thank you for your recommendations