The Road less Travelled

[flecc]

Apart from periods of climate change or migration, when the opposite would apply.

Nick

I was covering only the period in England from 4000 to 6000 years ago when agriculture first established here, so relatively unaffected by those factors.

As well as migration, in the historically most sparsely populated parts of the world, the Sahara, Mongolia, Kurdistan and Australia for example, nomads were commonplace, travelling cyclic routes with "hand me down" knowledge gained over long periods.
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[flecc]

What impresses me more is that there seems to have been a sea trade between Britain and the Mediterranean in those days.

Nick

It was only 8500 years ago that the sea started to create channels though the two remaining high ground strips that joined Britain and Europe which had been travelled for the previous 3000 years plus. I'd guess that the use of boats started then to bridge the small gaps, the later trade gradually developing enough to handle the ever increasing separation.
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[Tiberius]

No kings travelled the length of the country to wage war at the other end in those times.

But wasn't King Harold up and down like a yo-yo? Vikings up North one day, then down south to see about some Normans.

A little earlier, Alfred not only chased the Danes about, but made at least one trip to Rome.

Some of these people got about a bit more than you think, even without bikes, even before electricity.

Even William of Orange decided to go to London via the West Country.

Nick

 

[flecc]

But wasn't King Harold up and down like a yo-yo? Vikings up North one day, then down south to see about some Normans.

A little earlier, Alfred not only chased the Danes about, but made at least one trip to Rome.

Some of these people got about a bit more than you think, even without bikes, even before electricity.

Even William of Orange decided to go to London via the West Country.

Nick

I said the first 1000 years from the Roman time Nick, only Alfred you've mentioned falling just within that, and his fighting was in a linear strip, not as I said, travelling from one end to the other to engage in a war.

My original answers were about individual travel in answer to Rod's question, not the guided journeys of armies going to war, and there was little of that individual travel beyond droving to population centres and the roads formed by that.

The practice of enclosures which started with the manorial enclosures from 1215 and rapidly increased in Tudor times from 1485 onwards increasingly set the droving roads as the main routes for travel in many parts, which they remained until recent times.
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[flecc]

Rod, some more information on droving roads which I've pulled from the internet, showing how these were the main routes in Britain:

A 2,000-year-old drovers' route has received a facelift in an attempt to attract more walkers, cyclists and horse riders.

One of the oldest roads in Wales, the 15-mile Kerry Ridgeway in Powys was once the main route to London.

Linking footpaths and bridleways have been improved, while two car parks have been built, signs erected and a new guidebook published.

Drovers used it to shepherd sheep, cattle and geese to markets in England.

Linking the Powys village of Kerry, near Newtown, and the Shropshire town of Bishops Castle, the ridgeway is a regional trail and open to walkers, horse riders and cyclists.

Last used regularly by drovers some 150 years ago, the ancient highway forges a track through airy heather moors, cool woodlands and breezy bilberry-rich heaths.
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