We are very sorry to announce that we have failed to reach our financial target on the crowdfunding site Unbound in time for us to undertake the great ROTS Adventure in Sept/Oct this year.
We’ve decided, therefore, not to try your patience any further, and are closing down this Unbound project.
The money that many of you so generously pledged will be credited back to your Unbound account, and you can use this credit to support other brilliant Unbound projects.
If you’d prefer simply to get your money back, you can contact the Unbound team directly and they will sort it out for you. If you experience any problems at all with this process, do email us directly at rotscarruthers [at] gmail [dot] com, and we’ll go to work on your behalf.
We are, naturally, very disappointed not to have produced the Handbook, the Field Audiobook and the 1-month web adventure for you. But the last 18 months have been excellent fun, and we leave behind a content-rich blog at http://riddleofthesands.net and 26 podcasts available free on iTunes & Soundcloud.
We fully intend to keep the blog & podcasts online. And we won’t stop playing with old books, and taking them out every now and again for adventures in the modern world. We’ll use this blog and the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/riddleofthesandsadventure/) to alert you to any new developments as they occur.
Finally, many many thanks for your support, your enthusiasm, your generosity and your amazing emails comments & contributions. The best part of this adventure has definitely been all the people we’ve encountered along the way. Thanks one and all.
Lloyd NotDavies & Tim NotCarruthers
“To reduce a romantic ideal to a working plan is a very difficult thing.”
The Curiously Specific Book Club 
Very disappointing to hear.
I enjoyed going on the audio journey through time and space and learning the history behind what we read about in ROTS.
You both were great fun to listen to and I look forward to hearing whatever the two of you may plan next!
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Thanks Jeff. You’ve been such a great supporter, it’s terribly grim to disappoint you – many thanks for all the interest and contributions!
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What a shame! It was an exciting ride, and I loved being a part of it.
Good luck with your future ventures.
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Thanks Rob – disappointed, of course, but it’s been great meeting people like you. Thanks for all the support.
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Although this fate seemed inevitable given the funding position, it is indeed a great shame.Tim and Lloyd have done a fantastic job on this clever idea and left us a wealth of material which for me has massively enhanced my enjoyment of the Riddle of the Sands book.
Although I’ve read the book many times, my last reading, in the light of the information and imaginative speculation through ROTSAC, was a new experience.
Auf Wiedersehen notCarruthers and notDavies, I shall miss your entertaining outlook.
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Thanks Pat – we are, of course, gutted we couldn’t reach the finishing line. But we’re deadly serious when we say the best part of this experience has been meeting people like yourself. So thanks.
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It must have been a tough decision to make after you have both invested so much time and energy into the adventure, but at least you leave behind a great work of art in itself. A heroic “failure” – of the best sort.
Thanks for the ride, it was great fun.
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That’s terrifically nice of you, Kevin, thanks. And thanks for all the contributions. We’re hoping the ride isn’t over – just on a different track. Watch this space….
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Thanks very much for all the fun we’ve had along the way, and good luck with your future ventures.
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Thanks John – and even bigger thanks for all the contributions. Sorry we couldn’t get it to the finishing post.
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I’m sorry to read that your plan did not work out.
Leaving aside me and others funding your holiday (good idea, wish I had thought of it first), it looked interesting and inspiring. I was even tempted to bike over and meet up with you at some spot or other.
I went by bike from Harwich to Denmark to France via the coastline and tried to visualise the locale from their era. I expect that so much has changed that it was not possible.
Have another go. Thanks for the refund.
SW
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Your bike ride sounds great, Steve. You’re right. We shouldn’t give up entirely. If nothing else I need to get out there eventually to prove to notDavies that the tiefs are navigable! Thanks so much for your support.
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Sorry to hear that you were unable to complete the project as you had planned. I can imagine that it was disappointing to close down the Unbound section, but I feel that the Adventure Club was still able to bring together many different people who were enthused about the concept and expose them to information that deepens the reading experience. I’m glad to know that the podcast will continue taking books for walks, and I hope that maybe your paid holiday can still happen in the future.
On the subject of other books, I first came across the Adventure Club because I am a massive fan of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay novels, and I had picked up ROTS as a companion work, being a somewhat similar Edwardian spy novel. I would love to listen to/read/fund an Adventure Club-type treatment of The 39 Steps, although I fear it might not be possible, as Buchan is not (drumroll) Curiously Specific About Dates And Places. That said, the chronological setting (i.e. during the July Crisis of 1914) might give you somewhere to start with railway timetables and the like.
Whew, that dragged on a bit. What I mean to say is, best of luck to you both, and I look forward to following your future projects.
-Eric
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Thank you, Eric. It’s really great to get supportive comments like this. Yes, I think Hannay is a good idea. My preference would be Greenmantle since it *is* more specific about dates and locations. It starts in the UK on Nov 17 and there’s a strict deadline for getting to Istanbul. It might, though, rather ruin Christmas for our families…
All the best
Tim notCarruthers
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Dear Lloyd and Tim
I am sorry to have discovered the Adventure Club too late to have been able to follow in real time the informative and highly entertaining progress of your imaginative and ambitious undertaking.
Catching up with all the entries now as a single discovery, I find a really magnificent venture that has left a veritable treasure trove for “ROTS” enthusiasts like me – every bit as valuable as that lost with the “Corinne”.
Like many others (and obviously most of all you yourselves) I am sorry that it proved impossible to obtain funding to achieve full realisation of your splendid idea. But, also like many others, I am left extremely grateful for the mass of material you have posted on this site, and I wish you further enjoyable travels (both “armchair” and real) in pursuit of other literary adventures.
Bons voyages!
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Thanks so much for your kind words, Mark. Lloyd and I have really enjoyed putting this site together and doing the podcasts. We’re still thinking about what to do next… best wishes Tim NotCarruthers
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Hello Tim and Lloyd,
I just came over Your fantastic and inspiring site! ROTS my favorite book ever since. Pity I didn’t discover it earlier!
But funny enough, I recently wrote a little essay about what the Bradshaw reprint of 1913 did to my couch travelling! On the last pages of the Bradshaw book there are lots of ads of local hotels, referring to the travel suggestions in the middle of the book. One of these is a “Villa Hertha” here in Wiesbaden, being restructured a couple of years ago and now a listed monument in the state of Hesse.
So this is what ROTS did to me..
Of course I visited the Schlei area a couple of times, thanks to Carruthers, Davies and EC.
But this charming encounter with Bradshaw is only for the english reading fellows in Germany – the poor who read in german won’t find “Bradshaw” in it – simply translated into “Fahrplan”!
Another author who is perfect for couch traveling is in my opinion is Hammond Innes. I travel by Google Earth with almost every book I have of him.
Best wishes
Jan Viebrock,
Wiesbaden, Germany
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Hi Jan – many thanks indeed for those lovely words. It’s fantastic to hear of other people’s ROTS-inspired adventures. And a Bradshaw friend is a friend for life.
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