How, and how fast, could people travel in the middle ages?

by IntnlManOfCode

If someone needed to travel a long distance in the middle ages, say across England in the summer:

What are the transport options? I guess walk, ride a horse, carriage or by boat. Was there anything else commonly used?

How fast could they travel, or how far could they travel in day?

Would there be towns/inns at daily distances?

WelfOnTheShelf

I've answered some similar questions before: How fast did people travel in the Middle Ages and the travel time between England and Rome. I don't know the answer to all your questions but here's a summary of the previous ones, while we're waiting for other answers:

Average travel times on horseback were 20-30 miles a day (with baggage), and 60 miles a day on flat land or 30 miles in mountainous terrain (for messengers or urgent travel). “Nineteen miles a day was a good average for travellers on land” (Ohler, p. 98). “Generally a reasonable speed for a large and elegant retinue might be fifteen to twenty miles a day…” (Labarge, p. 16). On foot, depending on how fast you walked, and depending on the terrain, you could average about 15-25 miles a day.

For medieval travel in general, see:

- Robert Bork, ed., The Art, Science, and Technology of Medieval Travel (Ashgate, 2008)

- Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveller, trans. Caroline Hillier (Boydell & Brewer, 2010)

- Margaret Wade Labarge, Medieval Travellers (Hamish Hamilton, 1982)

- Anthony Bale and Sebastian Sobecki, eds., Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology (Oxford University Press, 2019)

And for some fun websites, you can play around with ancient Roman and medieval travel routes online:

- Orbis Romanus

- Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations