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Bear in mind that crossing water by boat is a lot easier to get from A->B than across land in general. Back in the day the land was quite heavily forested and

Bear in mind that crossing water by boat is a lot easier to get from A->B than across land in general. Back in the day the land was quite heavily forested and the M1 wasn't built. Even in "modern" times, it can take quite a while to get from say Plymouth to Inverness. I remember my mum (Devonian) recalling how long that trip took back in the '60s. Then she got posted to the islands on the north left and getting back home really took some time - the ferries can be a bit sporadic when the weather gets grotty 8) Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. Imagine there are very few roads, except what the Romans left behind. There are not many people and a lot of trees. Police is a concept that is yet to be invented although the Shire Reeves (Sheriff) is an early model. Most people's horizons probably don't stretch much more than 10 miles for their entire life. Witches are real and doctors were scarce and scary - they hadn't even invented the leech at this time. That said, some folk did travel quite a long way. Bede famously recalls a story of a pope who remarks on some slaves in a market in Rome: "... they are surely Angels ...". He was talking about some Angles who were taken from these isles who he found rather good looking. If you really want to get a flavour of just how complicated things are genetically here, let alone in the rest of Europe, try Stephen Oppenheimer's "The origins of the British" (1-84119 894 3)

udp 6y ago
I would also add Bryan Sykes “Blood of the Isles” to the reading list after Oppenheimer. Both excellent reads... from strongly opinionated Oxford academics.
- gerdesj 6y ago
  "strongly opinionated [Oxford] academics" - the best sort! As always, truth is not absolute but if you stop at the blandishments from that Geoff bloke off of Monmouth or that Walter Scott geezer, let alone whatever bollocks us English come up with, then it's downhill all the way to ... erm the present day.
Lio 6y ago
There's a great map at the Sutton Hoo site in Suffolk with the times to reach other places from there. Measured in days. It shows an empire based around the rim of the North Sea and you can immediately see why when you compare the times to reach anywhere over land compared to the see.
saalweachter 6y ago
> Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place names that were surprisingly Midwestern: Mount Illinois, Ohioville, etc. Weird, I thought, I wonder how that came to be. Turns out it was groups of settlers traveling from slightly further east -- it's only about 200 miles to Boston, the furthest-away those settlers could be starting from, on land -- hoping to colonize the fertile lands of the newly opened Northwest Territories after the Revolution who just gave up and settled here. Now, the Northwest Territories were another 500-1000 miles west of where I'm at, and where I'm at was colonized in the 17th century, so there was no mistaking one for the other. What must of happened was, one tenth to one fifth of the way in to their journey, these settlers got their wagons stuck in the swamps here, looked around at the rocky, unplowable mountains around them, and said "fuck it, we'll settle here", before naming their town "Ohioville" so when they wrote back to Boston they could pretend they reached their destination.
- jakeva 6y ago
  That sounds like the basic premise of "Waiting for Guffman". The characters of Blaine Missouri are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the settlement of their town by reenacting it. Basically the original settlers were trying to get to California but their guide managed to convince them that although they couldn't see the ocean because the tide was out, they had arrived. I just watched it the other night, pretty funny. I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    It's one of those things that is both baffling from one angle ("Why would you go to all that effort, sell all of your meager belongings you can, pack what you can carry, abandon the rest, outfit yourself, say goodbye to everyone and everything you know, leave them all behind, and then just ... give up?") and simultaneously oh-so-understandable, that process of realizing you're not going to be able to achieve that thing you wanted, that you thought you wanted. Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.
richliss 6y ago
I'm surprised by your first line. In the UK it's been considered that a combination of the sea and weather has saved us on numerous occasions including with the Spanish Armada, the Napoleonic Wars and WW2. "The waters of the Channel are notoriously treacherous, which could have posed problems for the smaller boats" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043 https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043
- gerdesj 6y ago
  That's what I grew up on too. However a bit of thought shows that to be not quite but close to bollocks. People even swim the Channel! Fast shallow draught boats, well navigated can whizz over by oar and or sail in a few hours or a day or two at worst. Top Gear sent some pretty dodgy aquavans over in one program. Even I've sailed a 28 footer over to France. Compare that to trying to walk say from Yeovil to Exeter in the SW of England. It's about 40-50 miles. Nowadays you drive via the A303/A30 or A303/A358/M5 and it takes an hour or so. Back then you have the Blackdown hills to get over and a lot of muddy tracks. I think you'd hope to get to Crewkerne or Ilminster on day one. Then Honiton on day two and then Exeter on day three. That's on foot. On horseback you could probably do it in one day and with a mule or cart probably two days. All of those towns existed back then and earlier. The Armada was something else - huge galleons outmaneuvered by our smaller boats - once the formation was broken it was a bit horrid for them. The Spaniards had a professional admiral who knew his stuff but a wanker of a noble put in charge who made some daft decisions. Also they were supposed to meet up with a land force in Flanders to transport over to England and that did not go well. The weather did favour the English as well. Once the formation was broken they tried to go around the British Isles anti-clockwise to try and get back to Spain, which as you say means seeing some of the nastiest weather and conditions we have to offer. Quite a few spaniards who managed to make it ashore in one piece settled here and there and improved the local genetic diversity 8) QE1 refused to pay our navy, despite they had saved the nation. Back then the navy was quite heavily privatised - Sir F Drake was known as a pirate in the Caribbean or a good English patriot depending on your point of view.

udp 6y ago

I would also add Bryan Sykes “Blood of the Isles” to the reading list after Oppenheimer. Both excellent reads... from strongly opinionated Oxford academics.

gerdesj 6y ago
"strongly opinionated [Oxford] academics" - the best sort! As always, truth is not absolute but if you stop at the blandishments from that Geoff bloke off of Monmouth or that Walter Scott geezer, let alone whatever bollocks us English come up with, then it's downhill all the way to ... erm the present day.

Lio 6y ago

There's a great map at the Sutton Hoo site in Suffolk with the times to reach other places from there. Measured in days. It shows an empire based around the rim of the North Sea and you can immediately see why when you compare the times to reach anywhere over land compared to the see.

saalweachter 6y ago

> Try not to look at the map of Europe as a driver of a vehicle capable of >100mph. So I live in the Hudson Valley, upstate NY. I noticed some local place names that were surprisingly Midwestern: Mount Illinois, Ohioville, etc. Weird, I thought, I wonder how that came to be. Turns out it was groups of settlers traveling from slightly further east -- it's only about 200 miles to Boston, the furthest-away those settlers could be starting from, on land -- hoping to colonize the fertile lands of the newly opened Northwest Territories after the Revolution who just gave up and settled here. Now, the Northwest Territories were another 500-1000 miles west of where I'm at, and where I'm at was colonized in the 17th century, so there was no mistaking one for the other. What must of happened was, one tenth to one fifth of the way in to their journey, these settlers got their wagons stuck in the swamps here, looked around at the rocky, unplowable mountains around them, and said "fuck it, we'll settle here", before naming their town "Ohioville" so when they wrote back to Boston they could pretend they reached their destination.

jakeva 6y ago
That sounds like the basic premise of "Waiting for Guffman". The characters of Blaine Missouri are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the settlement of their town by reenacting it. Basically the original settlers were trying to get to California but their guide managed to convince them that although they couldn't see the ocean because the tide was out, they had arrived. I just watched it the other night, pretty funny. I wonder how often this sort of thing happened. I imagine it was pretty common, knowing how difficult travel was back then.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  It's one of those things that is both baffling from one angle ("Why would you go to all that effort, sell all of your meager belongings you can, pack what you can carry, abandon the rest, outfit yourself, say goodbye to everyone and everything you know, leave them all behind, and then just ... give up?") and simultaneously oh-so-understandable, that process of realizing you're not going to be able to achieve that thing you wanted, that you thought you wanted. Maybe you still do; maybe you have realized there's something else you want more. Maybe you can give up your goal without effort; maybe you spend the rest of your life rationalizing or regretting your decision to give up when you did. Maybe your attempt cost you something that makes having or not having what you wanted irrelevant, and the rest of your life is just ashes, muddling on.

richliss 6y ago

I'm surprised by your first line. In the UK it's been considered that a combination of the sea and weather has saved us on numerous occasions including with the Spanish Armada, the Napoleonic Wars and WW2. "The waters of the Channel are notoriously treacherous, which could have posed problems for the smaller boats" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043 https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/52808043

gerdesj 6y ago
That's what I grew up on too. However a bit of thought shows that to be not quite but close to bollocks. People even swim the Channel! Fast shallow draught boats, well navigated can whizz over by oar and or sail in a few hours or a day or two at worst. Top Gear sent some pretty dodgy aquavans over in one program. Even I've sailed a 28 footer over to France. Compare that to trying to walk say from Yeovil to Exeter in the SW of England. It's about 40-50 miles. Nowadays you drive via the A303/A30 or A303/A358/M5 and it takes an hour or so. Back then you have the Blackdown hills to get over and a lot of muddy tracks. I think you'd hope to get to Crewkerne or Ilminster on day one. Then Honiton on day two and then Exeter on day three. That's on foot. On horseback you could probably do it in one day and with a mule or cart probably two days. All of those towns existed back then and earlier. The Armada was something else - huge galleons outmaneuvered by our smaller boats - once the formation was broken it was a bit horrid for them. The Spaniards had a professional admiral who knew his stuff but a wanker of a noble put in charge who made some daft decisions. Also they were supposed to meet up with a land force in Flanders to transport over to England and that did not go well. The weather did favour the English as well. Once the formation was broken they tried to go around the British Isles anti-clockwise to try and get back to Spain, which as you say means seeing some of the nastiest weather and conditions we have to offer. Quite a few spaniards who managed to make it ashore in one piece settled here and there and improved the local genetic diversity 8) QE1 refused to pay our navy, despite they had saved the nation. Back then the navy was quite heavily privatised - Sir F Drake was known as a pirate in the Caribbean or a good English patriot depending on your point of view.