It's probably been said adequately enough already, but I got these rates of medieval travel from the book "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman to use in my own fantasy story, and they might be useful for you. Also if they're wrong perhaps someone will correct it for me :] It's looking like they're saying 20 MPday for horses now, so that's one...
Average Day's Journey: On foot - 10-30 miles, depending on terrain Horseback - 30-40 miles (on good terrain) Messenger, sleeping at night - 40-50 miles on horseback, 20-25 on foot Messenger, changing horses along the way - 100 miles Pack trains - 15-20 miles Armies - 8 miles Recommended a day of rest for horse and rider after five days of riding, if possible. Sailing on river - 25-44 miles (upriver), so about 5 mph; 11 mph with sail if wind is blowing right/going downstream (this is based on the ancient Nile; I've been having trouble figuring it out for medieval cargo ships, but.)
For example, medieval guidebooks for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela expected the pilgrim on foot to do the whole journey, including the crossing of the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian and Galician mountains, in an average 20-24 miles a day, and that's about the distance apart the medieval pilgrim hospices are. (New ones have had to be built in the gaps for modern pilgrims!) One 15th-century pilgrim left a diary of his triple pilgrimage to Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem - over which entire journey he averaged more than 17 miles a day. On some days mountains, snowdrifts, broken bridges, washed-away roads, and brigands meant the distance covered was much less; he made up for it by regularly making 24 or 25 miles a day whenever the conditions were good
( ... )
So, you're saying that, Medieval riders (especially people on an urgent mission of some sort) could probably average, at the very least, 30-40 miles a day? That would cut down on the travel time significantly. Thank you!
But if your imaginary kingdom is peaceful and prosperous enough to have safe well-maintained main roads, and your characters are following a major route which has plenty of inns and blacksmiths so that every night their horses can be stabled and fed and loose shoes, broken tack etc. can be seen to, they should be able to average 30-40 miles a day provided nothing goes wrong. However, you need to build in a proportion of "disaster days" when, for example:
- a horse casts a shoe a couple of hours after they start in the morning, which means they have to lead it back to their last night's stop to get it replaced
- a bridge is broken so they have to detour up/down river to find a ford
- they take a wrong turning and get lost
- a horse goes lame and they have to negotiate with the innkeeper or a local horse-owner to sell it and buy a sound one.
Do mention problems like that, at least in passing - nothing in fiction is less convincing than a long horse journey in which nothing goes wrong!
Hmm...well, I wouldn't say that the kingdom is peaceful, but the area itself is rather quiet and quaint...other than the occasional soldiers on patrol, but yeah.
Oh, there's no way it's going to be a journey where nothing goes wrong! Plenty of things will go wrong. :)
Dude, I'm reading Tuchman's Guns of August right now, and it's seriously amazing. (It's 400-odd pages about August 1914 and the opening battles of WW1. And it's not *boring.* For research into an alternate history I'm planning out.)
In reading this book, I'm finding out just how utterly lacking my high school history's treatment of WW1 was, which can be summarized thusly: Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand, Germany went through Belgium, a lot of fighting, the Lusitania, Treaty of Versailles. Like, it never quite added up that there was fighting in North Africa and the Middle East (I knew about Lawrence, but not that it was the same time period.) And none of the background history, like why Princip shot FF and why Austria's declaration of war led in turn to Russia's, which then precipitated a giant mess. High school history is bollocks
( ... )
Average Day's Journey:
On foot - 10-30 miles, depending on terrain
Horseback - 30-40 miles (on good terrain)
Messenger, sleeping at night - 40-50 miles on horseback, 20-25 on foot
Messenger, changing horses along the way - 100 miles
Pack trains - 15-20 miles
Armies - 8 miles
Recommended a day of rest for horse and rider after five days of riding, if possible.
Sailing on river - 25-44 miles (upriver), so about 5 mph; 11 mph with sail if wind is blowing right/going downstream (this is based on the ancient Nile; I've been having trouble figuring it out for medieval cargo ships, but.)
Hopefully is of some help!
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For example, medieval guidebooks for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela expected the pilgrim on foot to do the whole journey, including the crossing of the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian and Galician mountains, in an average 20-24 miles a day, and that's about the distance apart the medieval pilgrim hospices are. (New ones have had to be built in the gaps for modern pilgrims!) One 15th-century pilgrim left a diary of his triple pilgrimage to Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem - over which entire journey he averaged more than 17 miles a day. On some days mountains, snowdrifts, broken bridges, washed-away roads, and brigands meant the distance covered was much less; he made up for it by regularly making 24 or 25 miles a day whenever the conditions were good ( ... )
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But if your imaginary kingdom is peaceful and prosperous enough to have safe well-maintained main roads, and your characters are following a major route which has plenty of inns and blacksmiths so that every night their horses can be stabled and fed and loose shoes, broken tack etc. can be seen to, they should be able to average 30-40 miles a day provided nothing goes wrong. However, you need to build in a proportion of "disaster days" when, for example:
- a horse casts a shoe a couple of hours after they start in the morning, which means they have to lead it back to their last night's stop to get it replaced
- a bridge is broken so they have to detour up/down river to find a ford
- they take a wrong turning and get lost
- a horse goes lame and they have to negotiate with the innkeeper or a local horse-owner to sell it and buy a sound one.
Do mention problems like that, at least in passing - nothing in fiction is less convincing than a long horse journey in which nothing goes wrong!
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Oh, there's no way it's going to be a journey where nothing goes wrong! Plenty of things will go wrong. :)
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