Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

later a portion of the 17 days is put into forts

This is exactly what I've been saying all along. I'm glad you have finally agreed - perhaps you would now care to retract your accusations about inability to read, understand, count, etc?

P wants to go 120 miles to Angelsey... is it reasonable to assume he set out with 17 days rations on the mens back to do so?

Of course not. See below.

your claim that mules not being used pre 200 is absurd

It's not my claim - it's the Historia Augusta. Disbelieve it if you like (plenty do!)

sure they can carry up to 20 days rations on their backs, at a cost of doing so.

Glad you are now willing to concede this!

The maths is either accurate or inaccurate, you have changed the maths...Your time line is wrong, it requires working back from the outcome to get 17 days

I only mentioned the 17 day ration allowance as an upper limit of what was considered possible. My timeline has Paulinus arriving in London after 14 days, well within that limit.

Paulinus would have marched from Wroxeter around mid June with an army of c.20,000 men provisioned for a three month campaign in Wales, supplies carried on mules and in carts. He would have built roads and forts as he advanced, establishing his line of communication and supply.

Once he learned of the Iceni revolt, he would have supplied an expeditio force of c.6-7000 men with marching rations for 14-17 days, drawing from the supplies remaining for his campaign force. He would then have marched back along his line of communication, 18 standard miles a day, to link up with Cerialis at Godmanchester. He would have known that he could get his force to either Colchester or London within 14-16 days and resupply them there.

So the only remaining question is whether you believe that Roman troops could have marched for fourteen days on the road without pause, or not. I believe they could have done this, and there are examples from our sources of larger forces covering similar or greater distances very rapidly.

Paulinus, knowing that his province was in imminent danger, would have pushed his troops as hard as he dared. Stopping to rest his mules, for example, when Roman citizen lives (and his own reputation) were at stake would not, I think, have even occured to him.

I was looking back through Roth's Logistics of the Roman Army at War, and he goes into the daily ration question in some detail (pp71-77). He estimates 17 days biscuit ration at 18.8kg (43lb) and cites Nicholas Fuentes's estimate of legionary load at 26.6kg (54lb) without rations. Total load would therefore be c.45kg (or 97lb). He refers to Marcus Junkelmann's experimental march of 500km across the Alps with a group of untrained German civilians carrying reconstructed Roman packs of 43-46kg, averaging 25km a day, as evidence that this would indeed have been possible.

Its also wrong at several other places  ORBIS* in Sept gives 21.7 days to reach Rome from Boulogne...
so i see no way for them to cross in late Oct or messages to reach Rome in 12 days.

ORBIS:

Londinium to Roma in autumn by horse relays = 9.9 days (I have allowed 12 days)

Londinium to Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne) by horse relays = 3.1 days (Likewise, I have allowed 12 days)

Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne) to Londinium in autumn by foot, by road = 18.5 days (I have allowed twenty days, after a five day delay, and that still gets them to the Channel more than two weeks before the end of the sailing season).

So in fact the timeline is on the generous side.  But my intention was to show what is plausible, and I have done so.

If you still do not believe that this is plausible, provide an alternative.