Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 6254319" data-attributes="member: 2518">As    [MENTION=6668467]saskganesh[/MENTION] said it heavily depended on the social rank of the person in question. The common people hardly traveled (and often weren't even allowed to). The farthest they got was to the next town to market their wares and to the next keep to pay taxes. The farthest the common farmer eventually traveled was probably wherever the local lord dragged him to fight in a war.Traders on the other hand traveled quite a lot farther as did people of wealth. They could often afford to go to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, straight across (or around) Europe if they wanted to. The crusaders themselves and also mercenaries traveled around a lot to wherever the next war was.And for nobility, long distance travel was possible either for themselves or the family (when they marry of their daughter to some other far away country) or through envoys (in 860 the King of Wessex, south Britain, send an envoy to a shrine in south India for example).Don't forget that even in medieval times there were cities in Europe which had a tourism based economy (back then called Pilgrimage).What affected traveling the most was the infrastructure. As long as there were roads travel was easy. But traveling through wilderness was very dangerous, not (only) because of brigands and animals but because finding (and keeping) water and food in the wilderness was a lot more problematic as was navigating. And the weather was also much more troublesome. The clothes and equipment you had back them protected you a lot less than what we have today and medicine was nonexistant or rather based more or folk tales and try & error than actual science.</blockquote>

Verification