Ready for 2023

The first hints of spring are upon us so we have been busy getting ready for the rest of 2023. It’s an important year. It will be the 150th anniversary of Stevenson becoming a professional writer when he had been “Ordered South” to Menton in the Riviera. We had a visit there at the end of February to start making plans; more about all that in a future post. It is looking good.

We took advantage of a splendid bit of weather to go back to Colinton to check out the work that has been done there by various groups. It is certainly worth a visit. And even better if you remember to go when their excellent café is open. I can vouch for the scones and pancakes. The website has now been updated to better reflect the possibilities in Colinton.

We’ve had a bit of fun with the Open AI engine GPT-3 incorporating it into ‘The Stevenson Oracle’. Just ask it a question! It is all in fun, though it does surprise with some of the answers it provides. It may just be there for a limited time, but we’ll see how it goes. We’re currently using a free trial period.

The website for the European Cultural Route ‘In the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson’ is currently being rewritten. That may cause some change to this website to better integrate with it. We are also looking at how best to incorporate a new idea for ‘The Kidnapped Trail’ into what is offered. The start of it is in the Lothians, though the rest stretches to the Highlands. It needs plenty of testing before a hoped for 2024 launch.

And finally, we have started looking into how to raise the profile of the website and all the things it offers. We hope that the 20th anniversary of Edinburgh becoming the first UNESCO City of Literature can provide a springboard of some sort.