Oh, GOD i'm such a raging sucker for Lippis. And I don't think that's just the Viennese side of me talking. Perfect little short compact powerful studly horses. t sigh

Anyway, I don't remember the website you're talking about, but I'll second the stallion advice -- they're a fucking PITA.

Did you have particular horsey questions?

How far could a party on five horses reasonably expect to ride in a day? (Walking or trotting, not galloping.) How often would teh horses have to be rested? Do you have to stop riding at twilight, or if there's a full moon could you continue?

Betsy, was it Horse Sense, A Writer's Guide to the Horse?

Oh, loook. [link]

That's not the one I was thinking of, but it's very handy. Thanks!

How far could a party on five horses reasonably expect to ride in a day? (Walking or trotting, not galloping.) How often would teh horses have to be rested? Do you have to stop riding at twilight, or if there's a full moon could you continue?

(meep! My doG, he's gorgeous!)

As far as your questions go t tears self away from Lippis the longest modern endurance races are 100 miles. At that kind distance, they'll be going at a fairly fast trot for most of the way -- let's say 10 mph for 10 hours. But that kind of distance is for desert warfare and the horse equivalent of marathon racing -- are your characters out for a pleasure ride and they get caught out after dark, or are they running from highway robbers or angry relations?

I ask because that kind of trotting speed is bloody hard to endure unless the rider is equally fit. IIRC from my old pony club manual, a more typical trot is about 6-8 mph, and a walk about the speed of a brisk human walk, ~3 mph.

Horses are naturally diurnal, and they'll definitely want rest and a stunning amount of roughage after a long day. Be careful of your road surfaces if you're riding after dark. And more than a full day or so of that kind of stuff will cause the average horse to break down -- even the fittest sport horses generally get days off after a big exertion.

Gah. Somebody somewhere had a Web page on writing travel with horses -- it was to keep you from making stupid mistakes. It did things like warn against riding stallions (they're a pain in the ass on long journeys), mares coming into heat, about how far a horse could travel in a day, and like that.

Jane Ross Ewing has one on her page somewhere.

Oh, and the answer to how fast horses can go remains "slower than a bleeping Winnebago."

That's what I needed.. Thanks, Plei.

Oh, and they're making roughly a two-day journey away from an approaching army. They're in a hurry, but they don't want to kill the horses. There's a pre-asphalt road. And the second day is up into the foothills of mountains.

So.... how far away are the mountains?

Heh -- Pookie tried to eat my shirt, the one time I visited Judy's place. His mom came over and pushed him away because she wasn't tolerating any rudeness from lanky brown adolescents who didn't know their place in the herd hierarchy. (They're really ugly teenagers, btw.)

Lipps aren't "small" -- they're not terribly tall, but they're built like Charles Atlas. They're also scarily smart -- think of the smartest dog you ever met, then multiply the IQ by two.

IIRC, horses have almost as good night vision as cats. I've seen it said that it's perfectly, terrifyingly possible to ride a horse cross-country at full gallop in the middle of the night, if you're prepared to let the horse set the course.