Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

I am therefore still not convinced that the Brythons first objective was London as opposed to the defence of their newly acquired lands.

I still don't understand how their lands were 'newly acquired'... Rome was in the process of annexing the Iceni homeland, but there was no colonisation, no forts, no garrisons that we know of - as yet. Aside from kicking out a few parties of surveyors or rapacious tax assessors, Icenia would not require much 'reconquest'.

Anyway, Tacitus clearly states that the Iceni had neglected to plant crops in the spring, intending instead to seize Rome supplies - so they were certainly leaving their homeland, and certainly attacking Roman supply depots; London being the principal depot in the south-east, with archaeological evidence of military grain supplies brought from the continent.

British force's rate of progress as being a maximum of ten miles a day is spot-on.

Ten miles per day as an absolute maximum, I'd say - and not on consecutive days either! The Britons were not a trained and disciplined army, capable of regular marches - their progress would have been slow, halting and rather haphazard. Five miles every other day might not be too unlikely...

I am not convinced however that the Iceni would have their families with them at Colchester with the wagons even in this scenario

I assume the Iceni warriors would have taken their families with them if they were leaving home - who would defend them otherwise?

the Twentieth at Usk and Gloucester holding down rebellious tribes. The Veterans of the Twentieth are in Cirencester or Bath.

Unless there's good evidence of the Twentieth being elsewhere, I think we have to assume that they were with Paulinus and his campaign army. He was the governor of Britain, and would have used the largest force available to him - we know that a single legion with auxiliaries was considered 'scanty', so he would hardly have led such a force into the homelands of the Ordovices. Surely his Anglesey campaign involved the Fourteenth and Twentieth, and he left the main force of the latter to hold his position while he marched south with the veteran vexillation and the Fourteenth...