18th century land travel

Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
Despite lots of reading etc, I am still none the wiser what people DID to get between towns and cities
- ride a horse with saddle bags
- take a pony and trap
- take the stage coach
- get on a canal
- take a coastal ship

Now, I mean I KNOW they could in some circumstances have done all or any of these, but I don't know what was mostly used?
I imagine geography is important
- if you want to go from London to Newcastle fast, maybe a returning coal ship is the best way?
- if you want to go from one little town to the next little town, maybe the pony and trap is the best way?
- if there IS a stage coach, do you catch that in preference to all other ways, but they would only plough certain routes?

But say you want to go from Monmouth to Worcester?
Do you simply get on a horse and ride it?
Do you therefore, actually, do THIS for most of your travel?

Befuddled Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Who are you, and how far are you going? Oh, and where? And how urgent is the trip?

I'm pretty sure stage coaches ran from London to Portsmouth, say. Probably the other major cities of England.
Probably the fastest, as they could change horses regularly.
 
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Dathi THorfinnsson

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Who are you, and how far are you going? Oh, and where? And how urgent is the trip?

I'm pretty sure stage coaches ran from London to Portsmouth, say. Probably the other major cities of England.
Probably the fastest, as they could change horses regularly.
Click to expand...
It's going to be pretty expensive, due in part to those same horse changes.

As @Jürgen said, the vast majority of people will have to walk.
If you are rich enough to own a riding horse, and you're making a round trip, they you might well ride your horse.
If you want to stay dry or carry luggage, you'll need a carriage (a little richer yet).

If you're a woman, you probably have to take not only said carriage (or stage coach), but also travel with a companion for propriety's sake.
 

Madhukar_Shah

The roads most places were essentially still Roman roads after millennia of neglect. Though France led the charge in creating a modern bureaucracy tasked with making new and better roads from about the 1740s and Spain copied them kinda even if the royal roads weren't planned on commercial routes, but royal routes.

Stage coach was a lot more expensive and gruelling than walking but faster. A journey from Augsburg to Innsbruck would cost an unskilled labourer a month's wages.

Broadly roads were worse in the east and south, and Spain was especially terrible when it comes to highwaymen.

Water was incredibly convenient for the Dutch and English, with canal mania making everything simpler and it could have been more similar in the HRE, but tolls on the Rhine prevented it from being as convenient as it might have been, a tragedy of the commons of sorts. Canals were practically the only method of transport that left at a particular set time.
 
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