Copyright � 2026 by Shane
Tourtellotte
Once you have gotten to when you're going, it's time to worry about getting where you're going. If you have only one specific destination in mind, your time machine probably delivered you close enough to be able to walk the remaining distance comfortably. But you might instead be making a wider tour of the era, visiting several places. You may want a base in a city for visiting a rural site, or vice versa. You might, heavens forbid, need to get away from someplace fast without access to your time machine.
Knowing about alternative means of travel is important. For a huge swath of human history, from the sputtering out of the Stone Age to the mid-19th century, and well beyond in many areas, that has meant one thing: horses. If you want to get around in the past, chances are you need to know something about horses.
You probably think you already know something about them. It's possible you actually do. For many millions of people in modern society, however, the majority of our knowledge of horses comes from watching the Kentucky Derby1. This is akin to learning how to drive from watching The Fast and the Furious2.
One short chapter in this book cannot be comprehensive, but it can give you an elementary grounding. You won't look like a complete fool in front of the locals, and you won't drive some unfortunate horse to death through your ignorance. Our example age will be Elizabethan England.
Horses Are Not Motorcycles
This is where much of our unlearning from horse racing, and especially movies and television, must take place. You cannot leap into the saddle, take off at a gallop, and maintain that pace for hours on end. Imagine expecting an average person to run at the speed of an Olympic 100-meter sprinter for the length of a marathon. We can't do it, it would kill us to try -- and it's the same with horses. Realistic expectations, however inconvenient, are essential.
An average horse, traveling on the unpaved roads of 16th-century England, and assuming good weather, will manage 25 miles per day at a comfortable pace. (Walking those same primitive roads yourself, you could cover about half this.) You can stretch the horse's daily range to as much as 50 miles, at the cost of exhausting the horse. You couldn't maintain this pace past a day or two.
There is one way around this limitation. On major English roads, there will be post-houses at intervals of about ten miles, where you can change horses. The costs will be very high, as you'll have to hire people at each stop to return the horses to their original posts. Still, this will allow you to cover ten miles every hour, and a hundred miles or even more in one day. If you really need to cover long distances in short timespans, you may be better off risking using your time machine, if it can also traverse space.
Horses for Courses
Not all horses are equal. A horse suited for pulling ploughs isn't necessarily suited for riding, and vice versa. The local stable probably won't try to cheat you this way when selling or renting you a riding horse, but be aware that there are differences.
Stallions3 make excellent mounts -- for excellent riders. For novices, they'll be too unmanageable. Opt for a gelding if you can: they're nearly as strong as stallions, and more docile. If someone offers you a nag, you're not being insulted or ripped off. To Elizabethans, "nag" meant a strong, reliable horse, ideal for long trips. You are being insulted, though, if someone tries to palm off a "jade" on you. This is an old, spent horse (and in contemporary slang, an old, spent woman as well).
Prices will vary due to inflation in the period and from large cities to smaller towns, but hiring a horse will cost you roughly one shilling a day, or 2 1/2 pence per mile ridden. Buying one outright will run you around two pounds. If your riding skills are simply not up to scratch, you could consider hiring a coach for your quick travels. This will be pricy at around ten shillings a day, for a bumpy ride that will not cover quite as much ground as a single horse would.
In The Saddle
Period saddles aren't a match for ours -- ironically, the English haven't yet invented the English saddle -- so even those with a bit of equestrian experience may feel a touch lost. For pure beginners, here's a one-sentence guide to mounting: left foot into left stirrup; grasp the pommel and cantle (front and back of the saddle) with your hands, holding the reins in your left hand; lift up and swing your right foot over the saddle.
If you still have problems, swallow your pride and get help from a groom at the stable where you're hiring your horse. Mutter something about how long it's been since you've ridden, and give him a penny or two4 to refresh your memory.
Female time-travelers are advised not to request a sidesaddle: they have been invented, but aren't yet popular. Many women of this era instead wore divided skirts to ride astride a horse, and for the sake of control and speed, I recommend this.
To get the horse walking, squeeze with the legs, lessening contact once it's moving. Once walking, you can ask for a trot with another squeeze, and maybe a little kick with your heels. To slow from trot to walk, tighten the reins a little while maintaining a squeeze with your legs. Stopping uses the same rein action without the leg pressure, and sitting back on the saddle will help.
Horses Need Love Too
Not trying to cover the breadth of England in a single day is the beginning of wisdom in handling a horse, but nowhere near the end. Horses are sensitive creatures, and with the primitive training and maintenance methods of that era, they can stand some tender care. A few common-sense pointers will take you far, figuratively and hopefully literally.
For a full day's travel, you need to pace your horse. A moderate trot, alternated with some stretches of walking, should suffice if you're going to be on the road for several days. Good times for walking are when ascending a hill, or after a substantial feeding (walk it for an hour afterward: horses have surprisingly delicate digestion). Your horse will need watering breaks, but don't let it drink too much at once. Also, like a human runner, a horse needs to warm up and cool off. Start each stretch of travel with several minutes of walking, and end it the same way. Ideally, your horse's coat should be dry when you reach your destination. If it isn't, it needs to walk a little more until it's dried off5.
Don't be rough using the reins. Bits in this era are heavy metal things, and hard yanks could damage your mount's mouth. The trouble here is that you can't afford to be too slack, either. Treating a horse timidly, especially one used to having riders, will convince it that it can misbehave, with a snowballing effect. Be firm and steady. Don't fear the horse, or you're better off walking.
Avoid paved roads, which are hard on a horse's legs and hooves. In Elizabethan England, this basically means avoiding London and maybe a couple other large cities, which have narrow cobblestone roads. Slick with filth as those streets are, they pose a great additional danger of your horse slipping and falling, badly hurting you in the process. You can walk London quite fine, so doing without horses there is no handicap.
Stabling your horse overnight (say, at an inn) may end up costing more than your room and board for the night: twelve to eighteen pence, compared to around sixpence for yourself if you go cheap. Don't stint. On the horse, that is. In fact, vail the groom for a little extra attention to your mount.
Know Your Emergency Procedures
If your horse gets out of control, you need to keep a clear head, just as you do in a car that loses its brakes or begins hydroplaning on a wet road. Whatever the situation, keep hold of the reins. As for specific circumstances:
On a runaway horse, try to turn the horse in a circle if there's enough clear ground nearby to allow the maneuver. In more restricted ground, try pulling in seesaw fashion, one way then the other. The trouble will eventually be self-correcting as the horse exhausts itself, so hang on until it gives out.
If a horse starts bucking, try to lift its head with the reins. Once it's calmed down, examine the saddle. Something may have gotten under there to irritate your horse.
If your horse rears, don't instinctively yank on the reins: that will only pull it further back, raising the risk of a fall. Shift your weight forward, to move your collective center of gravity and hopefully get him back on all fours.
One final tip for the era: don't try to stretch your budget by stealing a horse. Queen Elizabeth was striving to build up the domestic horse population, for economic and perhaps military reasons. Anyone caught stealing a horse with intent to take it out of the country faced execution. For someone as foreign as you're likely to seem, don't count on their giving you the benefit of the doubt on that score.
Footnotes:
Reading/watching Seabiscuit and The Black Stallion may supplement that, but only a little.
Watching NASCAR races may supplement that, but only a little.
The name "stallion" derives from the mating stalls for which these stud horses were often bound.
This is called a "vail," as "tip" hasn't entered the parlance. Vailing servants is generally accepted, though going over a couple pence would be suspicious.
"Hot-walkers" exist today to do this for horses, and the concept existed back then too. But nothing says you can't do it yourself.
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