I am thinking about how far it would take for a person to travel from one place to another in my story. The idea is that while on horseback that it takes you a week to travel from a settlement in mountains to the ruling city of the region. But how long would that be on foot? I really want the world to feel large and expansive, yet I don't even know how long it would take to travel between one place and another. Can one of you kind people help me with this endeavor?
Horses are not always faster. Remember that horses are creatures of the open plain. In hilly or difficult terrain, a human on foot can often be faster. The average daily travel distance for a horse is about 30 miles, which is actually pretty much the same for a human on foot. Horses can run very fast, but they aren't machines, and they are not all Hidalgo. Fantasy stories often suffer from "machine horses", or horses that are never fed, never watered, never rested, can run through fields of boulders and rocks with no harm to their legs, and those who know horses read these stories and see dead horses.
The purpose of a horse for distance travelling is to carry goods, rather than for speed. The average marching distance of a Roman legionnaire during an 8 hour day was about 20 miles. You could travel further if you marched for longer or faster, but humans can't keep up that pace for very long. Large groups will travel at the speed of the slowest mover, or even slower so a group of travellers would take longer. Keep in mind, there were are few paved roads in a medieval setting, which would slow the pace even further. An approximation is probably 50 or so miles a week. That means it would take at least a month to travel from London to York.
Reading this really helps me visualize it. It takes me just an hour to travel between two cities here in Northern Sweden if I use the train, and that is just a bit further than the distance you say it takes to travel a week. That really puts our modern way of traveling into perspective as well as just how slowly it took for people to deliver goods and letters between settlements. But let's say it is two to three people with two horses traveling through mostly frozen forests and plains. Would it take them a week to get 50 miles? Or would they as a smaller group be faster?
How did people traveling over great distances find water and food for their horses? Did they carry it all with them, which adds more cargo to the journey and probably more time?
It would take them even longer. People just wouldn't travel in winter if they could help it. Bad weather, especially snow and freezing rain slows down the pace of travel and requires more physical effort. More physical effort = more calories to consume = more food that has to be carried. Remember, they can't simply pop into the nearest store to stock up on supplies. They're going to have to carry enough to get them to the nearest settlement, and even when they get there, food may not be available as the locals need to keep enough for themselves to see them through the winter. And it's not just food. If the horses can't graze, they will need to carry grain for them. And firewood too, to both cook and keep warm at night. Not to mention water for both the men and the animals. Unless the horses are used to the climate (e.g. Shetland ponies), the cold weather is going to be a danger to them. The last thing you need on a journey through a frozen wasteland is for your horse to die and you and leave you stranded where bears, wolves and moose might eat you.
Depending on the terrain, horses can graze but relying on that is a bad idea. You had to carry some food for your horses. Water was a more serious problem, unless you are following the course of a river. You would carry a sufficient quantity and refill when you came across a water source. If you happened to be passing through a village, you could ask to use the village well.
The idea is that the horses would have a thick layer of fur, so the cold wouldn't bother them as much as it would bother a real horse. So it is a good thing that it is thawing and that winter is turning to spring then? It is at the beginning of spring in the north when the story starts.
You live in Sweden, so I suspect your definition of winter turning into spring is different from mine. If there's still a lot of snow on the ground, that will still cause a problem. Melting snow can cause issues of its own, especially if it refreezes overnight.
Well, I'd say spring brings its own problems. There can be snowing/thawing cycles. A LOT of mud. And a real scarcity of food for both humans and animals. The weather should be warmer, which may be good. But it will also melt ice, which means if people wanted to cross rivers or bogs, they might find it more difficult than when these places were solidly frozen over. Also spring will increase water flow in any climate that has snow or ice, which means wading rivers might be a big problem ...or even impossible. A small party should definitely be more nimble than a large one, and it will be easier to find food, shelter and warmth for just a few. However, this will also make them more vulnerable to attack. And if one or more of the party isn't very fit, that will hold them back no matter how large the party may be. A traveling party is only as fast as its slowest member. While doing research for cattle drives in the American West, I was surprised to find that the average distance per day that a herd was able to travel was around 5 miles! And for settlers following the trails west in large groups, 5-20 miles per day was a common rate of progress—depending upon the terrain, the scarcity of water, and the food supplies. Especially if water was scarce, the impulse to push on faster was usually what was done. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. A history book I'm reading just now contains a bit about a family who emigrated from Iowa to eastern Oregon in 1848. They left Iowa in early April, and arrived at their destination in late October. So that was 7 months of constant travel across basically half the continental USA. But they made it before winter, which was the goal. The matriarch of the family lived to be 93 years old! I think if your setting includes plenty of access to sweet (not alkaline or salt) water, you're probably in better shape than if scarcity is an issue. But the terrain will matter, almost more than the weather conditions, even if good water is plentiful. Attempting to cross a wide river (like the Danube or the Mississippi) without any bridges or ferries will be really difficult. Getting through a mountain range requires knowledge of the routes, etc. Bogs and moors seem flat, but they can be extremely treacherous underfoot. Dense forests make navigation difficult, provide cover for outlaws, and are also tricky underfoot. Travel was NOT easy before the advent of good roads.
And because long journeys were such major undertakings, people tended to travel in groups for safety - and companionship. Remember that most people rarely travelled beyond the boundaries of their manor. Perhaps a trip to a nearby market every week or month, but serfs, for example, could not travel to another county. Medieval life was hard enough without taking unnecessary risks - and in their world, there was no business so urgent that that it couldn't wait until spring. Of course, in a fantasy world, things may work differently.
Thank you for all this great information. The idea was that they would travel to the city to sell valuable pelts and other trinkets to the market. They would hurry to do this because of the tax collectors that demands more and more money. So it would not be a situation where they can wait until summer to travel. So far I would say a journey to the city would take them two to three weeks, which means they would be gone for a long time from their settlement.
In Spring there is always water and mud everywhere here in Sweden and it often rains a lot. But our summers can get incredibly hot and dry. We had a massive forest fire two summers ago on account of the 30 C+ weather.
Tax collectors wouldn't be collecting in spring though. They'd wait until the harvest is collected and sold. At the start of spring, everyone has used up their stores and no one has any money.
Now when you mention it that makes a hell of a lot of sense. I would like to show how the taxation on the region is through the roof, but how do I show that efficiently if the tax collection happens after the harvest? And the settlement that the MC travels from lives of hunting in the nearby forest more than any farming since it is in the mountains.
Perhaps the tax collectors took so much last year that the peasants have no seeds left for planting, and the MC has to raise enough money to buy seeds for the new planting season, which obviously must be done before the season starts.
One thing I know from the period when I got everywhere by bike, no matter what the weather (I bought good winter gear and rain gear) is how treacherous ice is, especially from freezing rain or worse yet those horrible winter mixes. You know, snow, rain, sleet layered on top of each other, then it partially melts and re-freezes. Unimaginably treacherous to travel on foot. The worst time was when I had to walk my bike for long distances because each time I tried to ride the tires would suddenly slip to the side and the bike would flip up in the air almost over my head, dumping me on the ground. I found the only place I could even walk was in the grassy margin between road and sidewalk, and that only because the grass gave it just enough texture for some grip. Still incredibly slick though, and I had to grab onto everything I could—telephone poles or whatever, bus-stop signs. Without those I don't think I could have made it at all. I can imagine a fall on such terrain would break the leg of a horse or a person and they would probably just remain there until dead, unless others would pick them up and tend to them and carry them, which would slow the group down considerably. That's actually one way in which traveling in yon olden days might have been less dangerous—no such thing as smooth-surfaced roads! The very roughness of the terrain would in some ways be a help in icy conditions. But I'm sure also treacherous at the same time.
That accords pretty well with the history of the Spanish missions in California, which were spaced about twenty-five to fifty miles apart, so that it would be a day's walk or ride from one mission to the next. This was on mostly level ground, following tracks already established by animals or indigenous people. The travelers didn't have to carry that much, since their supplies would be replenished at the next stop. And since the weather was generally mild, they wouldn't have had to worry about snow, although the rains could be severe in the winter and spring months.
