Distance

[allmywires]

I'm really getting myself in a knot about this.

How far is a week's walk (at a reasonably fast pace)? I'm trying to discern distances between the places in my WiP and I have a feeling I'm giving my characters superhuman travelling abilities. How long would it take to travel 100 miles on foot? Or would that be far too far to contemplate?

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[HareBrain]

You mean you don't have a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Wilderness Survival Guide? Mine's at my mum's; I'll try to find it later.

In the meantime, I see no reason a seasoned walker wouldn't be able to cover about 25 miles a day if not too heavily loaded.

 

[Vertigo]

King Harold traveled 185 miles from London to Stamford Bridge with most of his men on foot in just 4 days, travelling day and night (they were a lot tougher than us in those days) where he then trashed the Vikings so throughly that of the 300 boats they had arrived in only 24 were needed to take the surviving Vikings home.

Then he had to turn around and race back South again to try and deal with William's invasion.

Now I'm not saying you are always going to travel at that pace, God forbid, but it gives you a reasonable upper limit and a good idea what people brought up working the land and without other forms of transport are capable of.

 

[allmywires]

Thanks guys. I'm gonna get my pencils out and start editing my maps!

 

[Shane Enochs]

The average person walks at 4 kph over flat terrain. You can use that to calculate your distance.

 

[James Coote]

Depends on a lot of different factors.

It could take you 4 days to go 25 miles in the mountains, but it could also take you 1 day to go 25 miles in the same mountains.

The big factors to consider are:

The terrain under foot:
A flat boulder field is going to take longer to cross than a ridge of steep grassy hills

The elevation:
Mountain air has less oxygen. That means more effort to go the same distance. More rest stops, less forgiving if you make a mistake

The weather:
Heat means you have to stop for water more often or carry a heavier load of water. Precipitation affects terrain. Rivers may be swollen and take longer to safely cross or you may have to divert around them. Landsides (caused by the weather) may mean the path has been taken out and you have to divert around or scramble across an unstable scree slope. Extreme conditions take a heavier toll on the body. Blisters from soggy boots or chafing bag straps cause delays when taking a break to fix, slow the general walking pace down

How well you know the path:
It's not just about how long you spend deciding which branch to take. Often, it just isn't obvious that the path has split because one branch is hidden by vegitation and/or the lay of the land. I'd say not having a guide or local, even if you have very good maps, will probably slow you down more than anything else in this list

The population density:
You may get held up by the farmer herding his cattle, avoiding an ambush laid by bandits or locals inviting you in for tea. Equally, you can save time not pitching tents / finding shelter if there are lots of villages to stay at, and also save by carrying less food (as you can just buy as you go along). Equally again, you may find there are lots of villages nearby then no villages for quite a while. That may affect how far you are willing to walk. You may not be able to do the 10miles to the next village having already walked 20 miles that day, so you stop in the village where you're at. However, you've still walked less than 25 miles that day

--

Anyway, this is why a local would say "Holtingford is a week's walk away" not "Holtingford is 100 miles away." There is a reason country miles are so inconsistent

 

[Vertigo]

Shane that is true today and indeed has been the guiding figure for many years (3 mph is usually the Imperial figure used). However in pre technology times when people would walk long distances, not for pleasure but of necessity, I suspect they would have walked considerable faster and quite possibly alternated walking and gentle running.

Depends a lot on the setting of your story allmywires.

Edit: James got in ahead of me. Re the elevation you need to be looking at 3000m or more (10,000 feet) for it to significantly effect your ability to walk. For some, like me, a little less for the headaches to start though

 

[allmywires]

Thanks James, very comprehensive!

My characters are always with people who know the lay of the land well, so misdirection isn't a problem for them. As it turns out, I think my original estimations might be almost right, but it's great to have it clear in my head properly!

Fortunately, Vertigo, I only make them cross a mountain pass once, but they spend a long long time in the desert...

 

[goldhawk]

The legend of Pheidippides says he ran 240 km (150 miles) in two days. People were so impressed by his feats that they reenact them to this day.

 

[Gumboot]

As others have already pointed out, there's so many factors at play it's virtually impossible to make a determination without a lot more information. I do hiking as a recreation activity, where it has been starkly demonstrated time and time again just how much this can vary.

The biggest factors are going to be terrain, load, climate and weather, and each of these alone can vastly affect your travel speed. Another thing to consider is the size of your group; once you get up to large groups the sheer size starts to really impact the speed you can travel at. A Roman Legion, for example, would march all day and cover only 8 miles, which seems ridiculous, but each individual soldier would only actually march for a couple of hours; the head of the column would be setting up the next night's camp before the end of the column had left the old one.

A final thing to consider is endurance. We can all cite remarkable examples ; like the Greek army's legendary march from Marathon to Athens (having fought a battle the day before!), but that doesn't mean an army can maintain that sort of pace for weeks on end.

 

[Montero]

Georgian theatre in Richmond, Yorkshire. Went round there years ago, there was mention of touring companies putting in ten miles between getting up and having breakfast. (Think it was ten miles. I do remember thinking that it was more than I'd do in a day.) Then they continued after breakfast.

Siege train in the Civil War - massive carts, cannon, oxen - about four miles in a day.

 

[Biskit]

My father (keen walker/hiker) walked from Bristol to near Reading to visit us just after he retired. Took him less than five days, and that was taking things reasonably gently, finding B&B each evening etc

 

[mosaix]

There's an annual 20 mile charity walk where I live. I've done it for the last 4 years (missed it this year due to injury).

The course is approx 40% flat, 40% hilly, 20% steep hills. I usually do some training walks in the previous six weeks. I'm in my 60's and it takes me between 4 hours 15 minutes and 4 hours 45 minutes, depending on the weather. That's walking as fast as I can. I doubt if I could sustain the pace for more than an additional hour.

But I would have thought that a reasonably fit person could manage 3 miles an hour for quite a while - more if the terrain was flat.

 

[Arkose]

I had walked from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the north rim in one day. In total it is about 23 miles and we left at 4am and arrived on the other side at 8pm (only water and a few bars). We planned only two stops but my father-in-law had back problems and needed to make more stops. It is not uncommon for some to do a "rim-to-rim-to-rim" (46 miles) with little stops (4-6) in about 16-24 hours. I remember while walking we where passed by a runner (yes, people do run across the Grand Canyon) going down around 5 am and we saw him again about half a day later going the other direction.

Depending on the type of person and how much experience with hiking I can expect anywhere from 23 miles for the non-experienced to around 40 miles for the more experienced with mountains (estimated 6,000ft change in elevation). On flat ground I'm sure you can easily double it.

I would also note that if a person is hiking a long distance, where they will have to spend the night outside, that they would stop sooner to set up camp or even sooner if they know its a last water source for miles.

I do recommend anyone to hike the Grand Canyon from one rim to another. Many older people can do it, and it is an amazing experience. Please just be smart about it. Many people die from not bringing any water, getting lost, or trying to swim across the Colorado River.

 

[paranoid marvin]

It's trickey,, and depends on many things. Weather is an important factor - much easier to travel faster in cool rather than hot conditions. Depends on the fitness of the individual. Depends on the tearrin - is it a straight line or over mountains? 3 miles over a moderately sized mountain mountain is probably equivalent to 7 or 8 on the flat - possibly more. Also walking on roads or pathways is quicker than desert , grasslands or jungle. Also what they're carrying is going to determine their speed and stamina. And what sustenance they get - without adequate food and water, they're really going to be coming to the end of their endurance come day 4.

Don't forget as well that if it's a group they can only travel as fast as the slowest member. And of course the number of miles travelled on day 1 is likely to be mch greater than on day 4 (perhaps day 5 they'll be quicker as they reach the end of their journey).

Given average terrain, over level rough ground (rather than roads), with moderately fit adults, then 30 miles the first day, 25 the second, 20 the third and fourth and 25 on the fifth shouldn't be unrealistic, and certainly not superhuman.

 

[RJM Corbet]

20 miles takes most of the night when you're in your 20's and you've had too much to drink and your car's broken down, and you smell of petrol all the way from trying to fix the fuel line.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm sure there's an important consideration in the fitness / health of the walkers. All of the examples given of armies and great feats of walking / running are of very fit people. Soldiers are fit. They don't recruit sickies. But towns folk are not all the same. There are elderly and sick and overweight among them, and maybe quite a few who don't walk very much normally. They may walk at three miles an hour, but my thought would be that many of them might not last the hour. And as someone said, groups generally travel at the rate of their slowest walker.

For a general assortment of towns folk, my thought would be that twenty miles in a day would be ambitious.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[MstrTal]

If I did 20 miles in a day it would be because my life literally depended on it and I knew the area and were I could hide resupply and find plenty of water. It would have to be optimal conditions for me to do 20 miles on foot in a day other wise I would end up dead. . . unless I was at a theme park with the kids. Either way it would still be torture in the purest since.

 

[TomS]

It also depends on whether or not someone is trying to track you down and kill you, as may happen in a story....just like in real life.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

A reasonably fast pace for the average human, I think, is around three miles an hour over flat terrain. But there's a lot of factors to bring into it, terrain being only one. The condition of the person, the weather, the season-summer stays bright longer than winter-and of course, terrain. There's also the factor of what the person is carrying, if the person is solo or not, and natural endurance. I think walking ten hours a day for a person in good shape isn't too much a stretch, so barring any breaks in the walking that would interrupt time, about four day's worth for 100 miles, I would hazard to guess.