Did medieval peasants travel? Jason Kingsley answers, I add marginal notes

Did medieval peasants travel?
25th April 2022 | Modern History TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvbm84iN7qk

The one comment where I disagree is the last separate one cited here at time signature 9:06:

I

1:42 I will give you a little hint about travel speed on foot.

In 2004, I made a pilgrimage to St. James in Galicia. Most km in hitchhiking, but last c. 750 on foot. The on-foot part involved two fairly short hitchhikes and took me 50 days including some days spent in rest, for one thing I came to Ponferrada a little before I could go to the dentist there, so, I had to wait (going on would have involved the risk of getting to a village on the Monday, where there wouldn't have been one). 15 km / day is a fair estimate of the medium.

While 5 km/h is fairly attainable, I took rests and I also followed people walking, since I arrived without resources and had to get what I could by being hopefully at least moderately pleasant company.

If you are still into miles, that's about 10 miles a day, a bit more than 3 miles an hour.

No GPS for me, if there weren't yellow bricks like in Oz, there were however lots of yellow arrows.

"Seguir las flechas amarillas, seguir las flechas amarillas, seguir las flechas amarillas, a Sa-an-ti-a-go" (melody see "Glory, glory Hallelujah").

5:28 The way stations have been reconstructed in the shape of "albergues de peregrinos" (at work at least during "años Jacobeos" / "anos Xacobeos", like 2004 was, when St. James, 25.VII, was a Sunday.

6:50 sticks are a very good way not just of being safe, but of walking. A long stick about your own length takes one stride while you take four steps, it helps (as with the guys who use ski sticks when walking) and I had the 4/4 rhythm very well into my organism, as well as a good singing voice.

"muß i denn" taught by Elvis Presley, "red river valley" and obviously "hark when the night is falling" as well as "in Dublin's fair city" ...

II

3:54 I wonder how a man from Yorkshire was going to fare when getting into Kent!

There was no Standard British English mediatised by schools, radio, newspapers, comic books, films and TV back then, and there was this very well known episode just before Caxton started when the dialectal forms "eggs" vs "eyren" came into the way of understanding.

Oxford Street and London Road have counterparts in France. In central Paris, there is a road called Rue de St. Denis, later on Rue de Faubourg de St. Denis, and it would seem if you go on even further, you get to the exact same St. Denis where lots of kings are buried (I usually take or took the transports there).

9:44 Yeah, like I said about "eggs" and "eyren" .... Chapter two of The Hobbit is so right in this respect.

Though to be fair, today it is like going from a place where they speak Danish, to, across the frontier, one where they speak German, after next frontier Dutch, then French, and after Hendaye, at Irún, the language I had been apprehensive of not speaking it good enough - my first try at oral Spanish was a relief, but it was also not bad that lots of people spoke lots of different languages from elsewhere, on the Camino. The most major language change in Spain itself was, in Bierzo and in Galicia, they speak Galego (a graffiti in El Bierzo : "O Berzo xa fala galego") but that was optional, all Galician speakers speak Spanish as well. Plus, in León on the way back, in a homeless shelter, I heard the expression "un cafetín" used as the Mexican "un cafetiiito".

Back then it would have been involving a bit of a language course where the target language was always changing a bit from day to day.

III

9:06 Look, Chaucer doesn't say the Knight is right against the Pardoner!

He's just saying what each of them is saying ... and even if he did say that in his own right, this doesn't mean the knights were right, it may have been a prejudice.