I'm wondering how long would it take to travel from Woodland Hall to The Shire. Is there a way to figure this out since the map does not include The Shire?

Take a look at the Journeys Without Maps topic in general for how to answer similar questions.

As to a specific answer... From the Brandywine Bridge (the most definitive landmark along the eastern edge of the Shire), east as the crow flies (so we're not following roads), it is just over 500 miles to the Carrock. It's approximately another 50 miles to get from the Brandywine Bridge to Hobbiton.

This measurement is based on Tolkien's map included in the LOTR books (Fellowship, Two Towers). Keep in mind that every Middle-earth RPGs has had slightly different maps so the numbers above might not be perfectly accurate in TOR.

Thank you. So we're talking about well over 200 days of travel on foot, and somewhere in the ballpark of 125 days on horseback. Drat. This won't work for my timeline.

Actually based on what Francesco wrote in the Journeys without Maps post and what I found on Wikipedia, I think this will work, and take less time then the mechanic suggests:

Land's End to John o' Groats is the traversal of the whole length of the island of Great Britain between two extremities; in the southwest and northeast. The traditional distance by road is 874 miles (1,407 km) and takes most cyclists ten to fourteen days; the record for running the route is nine days. Off-road walkers typically walk 1,200 miles (1,900 km) and take two or three months for the expedition.

And since the journey to The Shire happens off-screen as it were, I'll go mechanic-light in this instance.

Just keep in mind that Francesco was talking about a "well known route" with a large party of mounted warriors. That is going to differ from a first trip through unknown terrain.

It isn't a first trip through unknown terrain. It's a Hobbit from The Shire heading home on a pony for his cousin's wedding at the end of July. He is also escorted most of the way by men for one leg of the trip and elves for the other. And then he returns to the Wild in November with a Hobbit caravan in time to attend the Gathering of Five Armies.

Ah, then I stand corrected. Sorry, I thought you were taking Wilderland characters (Beorning, Dwarf of the Lonely Mountain, etc) into Eraidor based on verbal directions or a map.

A Hobbit caravan you tell me, a little bit of foreshadowing perhaps?

But of course!

Long distance hobbit caravan... One cart filled with barrels of pipeweed while another 40 carts are filled with food!

The foreshadowing is a great idea, Beckett.

I imagine that some of the barrels need some ale in them Garn.

Thank you, Halbarad. My group played through The Marsh Bell and Words of the Wise before the PDF release of Tales from Wilderland.

At the end of The Marsh Bell, I decided to make the Bell a bit more important. I connected The Marsh Bell and Words of the Wise together. Here is a very condensed version of the story so far.


Year 2946

Spring

Two Dwarven messengers leave the Lonely Mountain on an errand for King Dáin. They disappear in the Long Marshes. The Kingdom under the Mountain is astir, and the news quickly reaches Dale, Esgaroth, and many other settlements in the Wild.

A Fellowship forms to search for the missing Dwarves. The Company leaves Lake-town, traveling on boats downriver and enters the Long Marshes. They rescue the Dwarves from the lair of the Marsh-Dwellers and discover a most peculiar bell possessed of dark enchantments. The artifact is from ages past, some say from just after the making of the world. The Elf Galion instructs them to take the bell to the wizard at Rhosgobel.

Summer

The Fellowship delivers the Marsh Bell to Radaghast the Brown in Rhosgobel but not before learning of a Goblin horde marching on Woodland Hall. The Fellowship rallies Elves, Beornings, and Eagles to come to the aid of the Woodmen.

The Battle of Woodland Hall is joined and the Free Peoples are victorious.

Radaghast the Brown urges Mungo The Hobbit to return to the Shire, telling him that pressing matters at home require his attention and that their paths would cross again. Of that he has little doubt.

---

Of course, the pressing matters at home concerned Mungo's cousin, Agatha Took's wedding. So while a certain Easterly Inn is being built, the Fellowship of the Bell (as it were) will meet up again at the Gathering of Five Armies and then set out in the Spring of the new year.

Radaghast has gone missing (and so has the Bell) and there's an evil stirring in Mirkwood that has the Elves worried. Don't Leave the Path! followed by ... you guessed it, Of Leaves & Stewed Hobbit.

---

Tolkien purists might want to kill me over this but whatever...

A Brief History of the Marsh Bell

As told to the Fellowship by Barald, the Beorning, in his feasting hall.

"This story comes from Beorning himself though I do not know how the tale came to his ears. The bell was not always evil. For years it resided in the great halls of the Kings of Gondor. In time, it was gifted to the family of a woman of the northmen tribes of Rhovanion who married the son of a Gondorian King. A marriage that sparked the kin-strife, a civil war fought over one thousand years ago. All of a ruin befell the lands, the Shadow crept into the wood, and the hatred and the death married itself to the bell as it sat festering in the depths of Mirkwood. You can be sure the goblins know of its enchanting power just as you can be sure they know who hides it."

That's a pretty good backstory for the bell. An enchanted bell is quite a gift. It works though because, of course, the woman's father was King Vidugavia. I imagine that her 'bride price' was hefty indeed.
Are you going to give any more thought as to how it got 'misplaced', found itself in the depths of Mirkwood and susceptible to the corrupting influence of the shadow?

Thanks.

I thought I read somewhere that she was a peasant women from the northmen tribes of Rhovanion. Perhaps I'm remembering wrong. No matter, it changes little.

My players might be reading these boards, so I can't give things away. But, yes, I've given it thought. There is some history there for the players to uncover.

Great backstory on the bell. Nice work. I enjoyed reading it and it definitely fuels the imagination for one's own story development.

Thank you for sharing.

Yeah, that's good material and good use of foreshadowing, Beckett.

I talked about the significance of the Bell in this topic* last year, where I was starting my adapted Marsh Bell adventure from Dale-town instead of Lake-town, which offers another angle:

To provide the passage that I only referenced before, in The History of the Hobbit, John Rateliff notes:
"[...] the destroyed city [of Dale] had been linked with bells as far back as the first poem [...] The contrast between alarm bells and these golden bells [of the rebuilt Dale] recalls Edgar Poe's poem 'The Bells' (1849), which successively contrasts the sounds and associations of silver, golden, brass, and iron bells (delight, happiness, alarm and melancholy, respectively)." (HotH, Pt Two, p. 651)

Cheers!
--Os.

* And rechecking that post in order to contribute here, I added some further thoughts into a cople of further posts back there too.