In an essay entitled ‘Experiences of an Anglo-French historian’, Richard Cobb said of his 1937–39 years: ‘My long stay in France had enabled me to acquire a second nationality and to discover fraternity.’ His enriching experience, though uncommon in the 1930s, is commoner now among the young as the gap year or study abroad becomes almost a rite of passage in the wealthier countries of the world. It may be unduly optimistic to imagine that many travellers from times before the eighteenth-century grand tours had either the opportunities or the abilities that marked out Richard Cobb's life. But it does seem ungenerous to assume that travel rarely broadened the mind before the modern period. Indeed, in the era before the development of the nation state and the religious wars of early modern times, there were fewer barriers to ease of movement, as also to ease of communication, across Europe than were later to arise. In the popular imagination, medieval travellers are seen as very credulous and lacking in sympathy for the unfamiliar. This may, however, show more about their respect for the earlier models they used in writing their reports than about their powers of observation. To test this hypothesis, it is necessary to explore different kinds of sources in search of a more positive picture, looking for evidence of open minds, curiosity, willingness to adapt.