Just down the road...

[Straf]

A comment by damonjynx in his Lite Challenge thread made me wonder what 'down the road' means to different people:

It occurs to me that 'only down the road' is such a variable term. For starters it varies wildly for Australians and Brits. The Australian JRD (Just Down the Road) radius is, I'd imagine, quite a lot greater than the UK one. The time it takes may be similar but you can cover a greater distance as the crow flies as our roads aren't particularly straight, despite the Romans' best efforts. The time it takes may also vary quite a lot. I bet there are people in NT or WA whose definition of JDR are different to city dwellers from Sydney's urban sprawl or Melbourne. Then there are factors such as how much an excursion is needed/wanted. Someone in Alice Springs might think a day out at the beach is worth a 4 day trip, whereas here in the UK we're really not much more than 2 hours away from the coast, or about half the time someone in NT may consider it is worth driving to buy a bottle of milk for their cornflakes. Yet there are people living in places in the Midlands who think that the coast is too far away for them to regularly visit.

There is no doubt that the world has become smaller in our minds, with budget airlines offering lower cost travel to places that previously only existed in books. But I reckon we still grade local places depending on how long it takes to travel there. It takes me 15 minutes to walk into the town centre from where I live but quite often I'll drive there out of pure laziness, or because it might rain and I might get a bit wet.

Fantasy settings tend to be based on medieval or at least times before self-propelled (land) transport. This thread discusses how far it's possible to travel in a day over various terrains using various modes of transport. Travelling for long periods would have been unthinkable for a lot of people. Walking half a day to another town just to see a friend wouldn't have been a regular activity. However I think it's also a relative thing depending on where people live. For example those living in a nucleated settlement with everything nearby probably had no need to travel so far, whereas those living a few miles away in a much smaller farming community, for example, would have seen a couple of hours walking as a doddle.

Travelling long distances would also see a whole range of moon phases. There'd be darker nights and lighter nights. In fantasy settings this would also be true for Earth-like worlds. This webpage has a pretty good explanation of moon phases and common mistakes in fantasy settings.

So, to sum up, my definition of Just Down the Road (JDR) may differ from someone who lives in one of the smaller hamlets around here as they have to travel further to get things they need. Likewise someone in a much vaster country with a smaller population density would have a very different idea of JDR. I remember seeing a documentary of children in Mongolia or Tibet or somewhere like that who walked with their father for a week in the ice to get to school. People still do this in parts of the world. For me, if I had to travel more than a few hours to get somewhere I'd either want it to be on a long daylight day (i.e. summertime) or I'd consider staying overnight.

It would be interesting to learn what other people consider JDR means to them and in what contexts.

[Mouse]

If you were asking a dragon I assume that 'just down the road' would be more a case of a couple of hundred miles away 'as the crow... or perhaps the dragon... flies'

[Josiah VE]

"Just Down the Road" for me would probably be, just down the road, two or three. The road I live on is a straight kilometer long and other roads around are a mile. I guess I would consider our area rural, or semi rural. I'm not sure.

[Falconius]

I think "Just down the road" is a term measured by frequency of things along the road rather than distance. Its why when in a hamlet JDR could mean the next hamlet over whereas in a city it might mean the next block over. It is also highly dependent on context.

[Azélor]

It depends on the length of the road.

[Diamond]

Just down the road for me is a few blocks. After that it turns into 'a couple of miles'.