Transferring the Pokemon World to the real world - having problems!

Hi everyone! I'm really very new here, but I was desperately searching for a place to discuss a problem I'm having with a new fic, and this seemed like the kind of place to ask for help.

I'm writing a fic set in modern day UK, but basing it off of a Nuzlocke run I'm doing (I know Nuzlocke's are terribly overdone, but I do have such a soft spot for them).

My issue is how to translate the locations of towns, notable places and pokemon areas into a real world setting. The Pokemon locations shouldn't be too bad once I work out which real life towns should host a Pokemon gym, but not being from the UK is... kind of a barrier.

Is there any advice anyone could give me on working this out? Should I just pick a starting area to work from and go from there in a logical manner? Am I overthinking this way too much?

Anyway, to anyone who replies, I thank you in advance for your help! It is very much appreciated!

It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish by setting the story in the real world and the UK specifically. Why do you want to do that? And what have you found difficult about choosing where the gyms should be?

One way or another, you definitely want to recruit someone who's actually from the UK, or who's lived there for a significant period, to help you get the details right in the story. You might also get some ideas from this fanfic, which is set in UK-ified Johto and written by someone who actually lives in the country.

I'm writing a Sherlock/Pokemon crossover set in the UK, which is why I've shifted it into our modern world. I've managed a rudimentary list of cities where gyms could be, based on the area/reputation of the places (as much as google can tell me, anyway), but I was worried distance between them would be an issue.

I'm looking for a beta from the UK now, with mixed luck. Hopefully over the next few days I find someone able to point out any glaring inaccuracies I make.

Thank you, I shall give that fanfic a read!

These are the cities someone helped me come up with so far.

Pewter: Manchester
Cerulean: Brighton
Vermillion: Nottingham
Celadon: Ipswich
Saffron: Wolverhampton
Fuchsia: Warwick
Cinnabar: Coventry (or possibly the Isle of Wight? Would maybe make a little more sense)
Viridian: Birmingham
Elite Four: London

Realistically, the characters would just take trains between cities, but that's no fun. One thing you could do, though, is model the routes on the roads. I don't live in the UK either, but from my experience, the A roads there are just strung between the centers of a bunch of towns, so perhaps you could have designated "Trainer Routes" that run between towns in a similar fashion, but instead of traffic, there's trainers and the chance to encounter Pokémon. You'd have to make it seem a lot more treacherous than in the games though, so hopefully that's what you want.

However, there is a problem in the fact that the cities you've chosen are really far apart from each other and zigzag across the country. Manchester is up north while Brighton is on the south coast, and those are the first two cities on your list. My advice: look at a map, find some somewhat-major cities that link up in a pattern that makes sense, and go with that.

I've ruled out trains really as a form of travel (although.... maybe) because the time when the story takes place is a momentarily bad one for the human race. Pokemon are being driven mad by something and it's driven the humans back into their cities to defend themselves (the plot of the fic is the main characters discovering what is driving the Pokemon mad, and fixing it), which is why they're not just going to drive from town to town. The designated trainer routes is a great idea, since travel in this timeframe would be heavily regulated and guarded for people's safety, I'm going to use that, thank you!

With the distance between the town, I google mapped the largest distance (which I believe was between manchester and brighton, although I'll have to refer back to the makeshift map I've made up), and it turns out according to Google it's a 76 hour walk (or so). That's about a week travel time, and I can change up the order of the gyms to cut out back travelling. Looking at these considerations, I might research a few more towns and see if I can turn the Journey into more of a spiralling inward towards London perhaps... The distance isn't so much of a bother (the UK, England in particular, is actually really small, TIL), as the backtracking that they'd be doing.

Does this make sense or am I rambling? Thank you for your great feedback though, it's given me some wonderful ideas