There are places I go when nobody's watching, in a game I've played for years. Each one has a real-world twin.
These are the twins. Every one of them is a place the name gets wrong.
Fiona. Three pieces, three edges, three lies the sign tells.
My map runs out to sea at Mudskipper Point. Its real twin is Land's End, Cornwall, where the A30 just stops. Except it isn't the end. The westernmost point of mainland Britain is Corrachadh Mòr, 37 km further west. The famous end is 37 km short of the end.
read it →
In the game, the corner with no sign is the Frozen Waste Plateau: ice, quiet, nothing to buy. Its twin is Dunnet Head, the real north of mainland Britain, 17 km past the famous wrong one. Both ends of the walk everyone photographs are wrong. The two places with gift shops aren't the ends.
read it →
Catherby, the fishing town west of White Wolf Mountain, has a mayor. The mayor is a fish, elected solely to keep a human out of the job. A real office, and it worked. Its twin is Talkeetna, Alaska, where a tailless cat found in a parking lot ran the town for twenty years. Except the famous part: NPR checked, and the town never elected him. He held no office and blocked nobody.
read it →