Uhm... so there is no trade between the two countries?! Absolutely Story Based question.

@Trish no, at this point the those living in England are unaware of the much more advanced city in Paris. you can check my other questions if you want to haha

In good weather, a very modest boat might make that trip. Hell, it wouldn't be entirely impossible to paddle across it on a log. People have occasionally swam it.

Just gonna throw out there that people have literally SWAM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL between England and France, so yeah... Also, "no more than 17th century technology" is not almost no technology. Especially considering people had been traveling between England and France for THOUSANDS of years before that. Those are probably a few of the reasons there are downvotes.

@TitaniumTurtle should I add that these people have been prevented from crossing or making things like boats that could help them cross

Your premise is faulty. On good days you SEE France from Dover. Calais was an English holding untill the French conquered it in 1558. The ruling class of Britain spoke Bloody FRENCH for most of the middle ages! How could Britain be unaware of France when they had fought a bloody series of wars for 100 year about their claim that they owned France?! Trade of France with Britain was booming via Flanders and Wallonia!

Hey there, I really appreciate your accepting my answer, but you may want to undo and wait a while (24 hours or maybe more) before accepting. That is because the site is world wide and even if you you think mine is the best right now, you may get a bunch of even better answers later. Some really good folks may not even come on the site until later today. Thanks again for your confidence though.

@AlexandraEagle yeah, that would be a pretty key detail. That said, considering they can see eachother across the Straight of Dover. You don't even need a boat though. Like I said, some people have swam it, but if you don't feel that athletic you could probably due with anything big that floats or build a makeshift raft.

@Trish They're not unaware, I think they just don't know that there are people there, because they only live in Paris. Additionally, this is in the future, so I'm assuming that part of England has erroded away, and besides that there are people stopping them from travelling over. I know you can see the two countries from one another. I'm not stupid. I literally saw the smoke from Notre Dame from England. I am an English citizen.

You give us no baseline but "17th century tech" which directly translates to "this is set in 17th century".

@Trish oh sorry haha I'll fix that

You may want to give some reasons why boat travel between the two civilizations has halted. Since this is a future/post apocalyptic story you might want to share at least a vague reason why the coastline of France is not inhabited or why boats aren't a really big thing along the coasts, like new storms, shattered coastlines making landing nearly impossible, or radioactive wastelands. Those kinds of details really help us create awesome answers.

@PaulTIKI-MonicacomeHome I have those reasons. Should I include them here? I just thought it would be repetitive since I've asked other questions about it. Also, when I tried to put all the information in a question it got deleted. :/

Yeah, I think you may want to heavily rewrite this question, or at least add a lot more backstory so we understand the circumstances that negate the obvious answers.

@TitaniumTurtle read my comment above

@AlexandraEagle Even though you have added that information in other questions it is important to include it each time because we may not have seen any of your other questions.. You don't need to retype everytime, you could simply copy and paste or even hyperlink to the other question to indicate there is more detail there.

In principle you could swim. Swimming across the English Channel is by no means an easy task, but humans have done it before.

@AlexandraEagle I would say add some specifics rather than just generalities. The problem you are referring to is that a wall of text turns some folks off. I write far more answers than I do questions, so I know there is a balance point, but I can't articulate exactly what that is. Try to give us at least a few solid boundary conditions like "Paris is isolated because of the wastelands and the Thames has been irrevocably altered" Or "Dover is now filled with toxic waste so no one goes there where they can see the coast of France" Whichever fits the story

@PaulTIKI-MonicacomeHome I think I did that?

@AlexandraEagle That gives us something to work with. I'm assuming that England has been knocked back to the bronze age? Or just to the early Renaissance? Just wondering why an Island, even one as large as GB, would lose ship or boatbuilding ability. Or can they build wooden sailing ships?

@PaulTIKI-MonicacomeHome that's another thing I'm trying to figure out. I'm thinking that they can probably go east if they want to, just not to France. So maybe they would have no reason for leaving England? It's not like they're all dying; they're pretty happy living in ignorance

The beiggest reason that developed boats was not leaving home but getting access to fish.

@Trish wait thank you so much that actually helps me so so much

well, the invention of the tree-hull boat was to get a fisherman with his spear out onto the water of a lake or river where the fish were. Bigger hulls were then developed to get further out (net-fishig), and then to haul larger ammount of cargo along rivers. Boats were invented back in stoneage and have been around for most civilisations that had access to running or coastal water in some form or another.

@AlexandraEagle Think about things like the destruction of coastline between England and France along with No Fish, poisonous fish, dangerous fish in what used to be the channel and with a wasteland on the northern coast of France. A combination of reasons not to go looking in that direction. Someone might, given incentive, sail out kind of into the Atlantic and then head south past the mouth of the Channel and along the western coast of France, maybe even as far as Spain.

@PaulTIKI-MonicacomeHome in that case, it would be easier to sail east to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

@Trish that works perfectly into my story actually! If you answer something like that I can close this discussion

@PaulTIKI-MonicacomeHome Yup! It's actually not a wasteland, as it's been around 800 years since the disease, and I'm assuming all the human remains would have been decomposed by now, allowing nature to take over most of the area. So it's more of a human problem than an environmental one if that makes sense.

@AlexandraEagle Distances in Europe always throw me off. In the Area of the US where I live, The Distance from Antwerp to Paris is almost nothing. We will often give a distance in terms of time of travel rather than in km or miles. Antwerp to Paris would be equivalent to Wichita Kansas to Oklahoma City, which is a fairly common day trip. Heck, My daily Commute to work over three days is more.

"Water levels have risen": the strait of Dover is cut through a limestone ridge. The banks are high white cliffs; I'd have thought they were very well known. There is not enough water (or ice) on Earth to raise the sea level above the cliffs. The sea level cannot raise high enough to make the strait of Dover wider.

@AlexP shoot. so maybe they have some sort of illusion which prevents them from being seen?

Dame Vera Lynn, The White Cliffs of Dover. Famous song from 1942.

If usually nobody crosses the water, why does France spent a lot of resources watching the shores?

Almost no technology? Swim! List of successful English Channel swimmers: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

I'm confused, is the Parisian army in England keeping people from developing new technology? If so, how could the English be unaware of civilizations across the channel? If not, how can they effectively stop people from improving their technology?

@AlexandraEagle see what I mean about waiting to accept. I saw some great answers in here :)

I'd recommend against swimming (or rafting) across the channel, the currents can be harsh and the tide is enormous. People are only able to do so because of relatively modern support systems. Swimming across is more a fluke than a reliable way across. Rafting is a good way to get to Denmark or Brittany.

@Borgh: So you land in Denmark or Brittany, thus avoiding Parisian coastwatchers, hike to the vicinity of Paris, and sneak in by e.g. masquerading as farmers selling fresh strawberries.