Travel

= Travel =

Travel could be done by several means and determined to a great degree things of mail delivered, trade and the danger encountered. It was considered very physically taxing and therefor not recommended for the frail, such as pregnant women who were frequently described as miscarrying due to the rigors of travel.

Roads
Most people and goods travelled over the highways, which is rather lofty description of what often was no more than a sand road, though some paved roads from Roman times remained even then and improvements on such pavements were starting to be made. Mainly, land travel was on foot or in the saddle. In addition to their own two legs, lower classes relied on mules or asses, wagons, and hand carts. The upper class used horses, more elaborate wagons, and carriages. Wealthy or infirm people could also chose to be carried on a litter or a sedan chair, and carts or wagons could also be hired. Pack animals were used to carry goods and pull wagons. By the late sixteenth century private carriages came into fashion for the upper classes, and lighter, smaller coaches were developed and suspended on straps to provide a more comfortable ride.

Historian T.B. Macaulay describes:
 * On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire.At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug them out of the slough.

Brenna Deutchman gives this description in her essay on a Quaker lady travelling:
 * Roads were notoriously bad, and many became completely impassable to wheeled traffic during winter and early spring. Conditions could be hazardous on the road, because of the physical treachery of the roads themselves as well as human hazards. Roads were often barely marked, making it easy for a traveler to lose their way. Often, they became rivers in the rainy season, also becoming pocked with huge holes and ridges from water and weather damage, making footing treacherous. Accommodations for travelers, when found, could be unpleasant, expensive, crowded, and flea-infested. Travelers often slept three to a bed. Long days of riding horseback and long nights of semi-alertness could lead to fatigue and inattentiveness, making a traveler easy prey for bandits, robbers, and soldiers along the way. Many people made their living by stealing from travelers. Traveling could be extremely expensive, requiring equipment, money for lodging, fees for transport like small ferries or other craft to carry them across rivers, food, and money for care of their animals. Weather could also be a problem, and a traveler might have to cross rivers, climb mountains, and make their way over other difficult terrain.

The Comfort of Coaches
Those of nobility would have used a carriage with six horses "because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always sufficient." Distance covered without overtaxing the animals - approximately 50 miles a day.

Coaches gradually become more comfortable. The most common design, developed in Germany in about 1660, is known as the berlin. The compartment for the travellers has the shape of a shallow U, with a protective roof above. There is a door on each side and the coach can seat four people, in pairs facing each other. The coachman, driving the horses, sits above the front wheels. From 1680 glass windows keep out the weather, where previously there were only blinds. The first simple suspension, protecting the occupants against the bumps of the road, consists of leather straps on which the compartment hangs from the framework. The berlin introduces curved metal springs, which absorb the shocks more effectively.

A much lighter and racier two-wheeled vehicle, the gig, is introduced in Paris during the late 17th century. Relatively cheap, pulled by a single sprightly horse, driven by its owner and alarmingly easy to overturn, the gig is the first type of carriage to make driving an enjoyable activity.

At the other extreme from the gig, the more sedate citizen in 17th-century European capitals often uses human rather than animal power for short journeys. He hails a sedan chair and is carried, in elegant comfort behind glass windows, to his next destination. A sedan with wheels, known in Paris as a brouette, is pulled through the streets in the same way as a rickshaw in the east today.

Water
Canals are not yet in use in England (even though popular at the time in places like Venice and Amsterdam). Full scale introduction in England waited till mid 18th century. However the existing rivers were used as water ways, mainly for trade but it could also be used for a nice mild way of travel for the nobility.

There was of course the international travel over the oceans both in the light yachts that Charles II had introduced after his stay in the United Provinces and the large ships used for trade to for instance East Indian and the New World.