Walking- distances and times

[MichaelB]

Hey guys. I has a dilemma.

I'm trying to work out distances and scale on my little world map, and i've decided more-or-less that the distances between towns should be just under a day's walk apart. As in, you start walking early in the morning, and by the time the sun is beginning to set on that same day, you reach the next town/city.

The problem! I don't know how far a healthy premedieval unladen unburdened adult man can walk in approximately 12 hours.

I tried making a scale based on other countries which worked nicely, but then it turned out the distance between the towns was, on average, around 600 Kms. Not a healthy walking distance.

So, any resources or information that might help me? How far can you walk in 12 hours with no backpack and plenty of food and water for the day?

Average walking speeds per hour, sort of thing?

Halp please?

[Lord of Fools]

Well, I think the average jogging speed is something like 7/8kmh these days, but primeval men were smaller, so let's take that down to 6/7. I walk relatively quickly, but not as quickly as some other people (in my family), and can cover about 1.5km in something like 20-25 minutes. I am also quite short, so if we assume I'm normal size for primeval man, and that primeval man is a little more used to long-distance walking, and that the average 'day trip' walking path at Wilson's Prom is 16km... somewhere in the order of 18-20km.

Mind you, I could be talking schlock and am completely prepared to be disproved by someone with a less sleep-addled, caffeine deprived and more mathematically inclined brain.

[MichaelB]

I was about to post to say nevermind, I've found more-or-less what wanted. The average walking speed (for a 'brisk' pace) today is around 5.6 km/h according to one site, which translates to around 67 kms in 12 hours with no rest.

Knowing that the people of my world are quite a bit shorter than us, generally, and they would take at least one break during their journey, I've decided to make it 4.6 kms/h, with a half-hour break for lunch, to give us 52.9 kilometres in 12 hours (really, 11.5 hours because of the break).

Really, the people of my world don't have hours or seconds, I just wanted to know how far apart I can have my towns without travellers needing to take a tent.

Thanks for replying anyway, LoF.

[Sammi]

I will pick some nits, but you don't really need a tent unless you're going to be sleeping in the rain or it's really cold at night or you have stuff you need to keep safe from small animals. If these people travel light enough to not even need a backpack, I think we can assume the latter, and if they always walk from one town to another, they're probably tough enough to walk a couple more hours through cold or wet. You can probably make some towns up to three days away without requiring much ado on the part of the traveler. Even as a fairly spoiled child of the city, and of this day and age, I could easily walk for several days through mildly poor weather if I had food and the right clothing for whatever weather I knew I could expect. My legs would hate me afterward, but I could do it. I can only imagine that people in a society where foot is an accessible form of intermunicipal transportation would be able to outwalk me by orders of magnitude.

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[mcnicks]

I would tend to veer in the other direction. I don't know anything about the background to your story, but the first thing that pops into my head is: why would they be travelling from town to town? In a medieval environment, I would have thought that the main purpose of movement between towns would be trade, which means that travellers would be carrying goods to market, not just walking by themselves.

Also, the amount of labour involved in making a living in those times - whether working the land or making things - means that hardly any people would have the leisure time to just wander off for a few days to another town.

I'm not sure whether communities would be set up with the purpose of being a certain distance away from other communities, either. I would have thought that the big driver for the location of communities would be natural resources: next to a ford in the river; at the intersection between two rivers; around a natural harbour at the shore; at the head of a mine and so on.

[MichaelB]

McNicks: For the purposes of my story, it's a royal diplomacy thingy. Short version; trade agreement between two countries that requires trnasportation of visiting dimplomats AND sensitive documents through two other countries before it is ratified properly.

Sammi: that's a good point, and one that I hadn't thought of! Since for my story it is a group of diplomats, they'd be wanting something a bit more than a tent, though. However, commoners and traders probably don't need that sort of cover unless it's raining.

[mcnicks]

Ahh... Politics. :D

[MichaelB]

of course! Why else would a happily married flag-bearer/fisherman/farmer go off into the world for several years to make a journey mostly on foot through three different countries? Especuially since he's racially disinclined towards the destination-culture in the first place...