The area where these stories take place is roughly the part of north-western Europe now known as the British Isles, as it was some 10,000 years ago.
An ice-cap still covered part of what is now Scotland, and sea level was some 300 feet lower than today. Some of the action takes place on land now covered by water, the rest in places that still exist.
Some places and their modern names are listed below.
10,000 years ago the ice-cap, that had covered Great britain as far south as London and *, was retreating. Around 8,000 BC there was what is termed a re-advance, centered on Loch Lomond. However the weather, even in the north, was not dissimilar to what it is today. The world was, in fact, warming up then as now. Summers were shorter, but warm. Winters were more severe; thus the Shean Commonality, which now has the mild climate of Central Ireland, then had winters as experienced by North Yorkshire, where farms still get regularly cut off by snow.
In the far north, an equivalent today would be Northern Canada, where the summer is generally warm and fairly dry, but lasts only 2 or 3 months, while winters are severe and prolonged.
I have researched the probable flora and fauna of this period, and hopefully got it right. Since it was only 1–2 thousand years since the land was covered by ice, thick forest had not yet grown up, so that in many areas the landscape would be close to what it is today: open woodland, bare moor, while the newly-exposed North was still tundra-like.
British mountains are genuine mountains, but their actual height above sea level is not great— the tallest, Ben Nevis, is only around 4000 feet. Many are tough to climb, though, since they start near sea level, and the weather on any of them can be treacherous at any time of year. Even today, it can snow on Ben Nevis in June.
10,000 years ago— the setting for my novels— sea level was 300 feet lower, so the mountains were all in effect 300 feet higher than today. In some years, patches of snow still linger through the summer on the highest peaks, and this would have happened to a much greater extent then, even on mountains further south. Some would have had permanent glaciers.
These would have been melting back, as glaciers in the Alps are today. The way this happens, is that the lower end or ‘tongue’ of the glacier melts back in summer, but re-freezes again in winter. If the climate is warming overall, the glacier gradually melts more than it freezes, and so over a number of years it retreats up its valley.
In summer, even up on a glacier the sun can strike very warm. I've been to the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in France, which has permanent glaciers, in a summer dress!
