Medicine might not seem like a promising subject for the discussion of travel in SEAFARER, but in fact the transmission of medical knowledge requires that we know about routes linking England (and Ireland) to the southern and eastern regions from which medical learning came. Remember that in Bede's History (Book 5, Ch. 15) we read about the Holy Places in the East that the Irish monk Adamnan wrote about (Adamnan heard it from a bishop from France who lost his way and came to Ireland by mistake). Bede (Ch. 16) quotes sections about the places of Christ's birth and passion. Bede abridged Adamnan's work.
An obvious place to begin learning about knowledge of the East is with Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Elias, as we have seen, was a medical authority for Alfred and is also quoted in the Leechbooks in a list of remedies. Elias wrote to Charles the Fat in 881 asking for funds to help restore churches in Jerusalem. Further suggestion of contact between western Europe, England, and the East comes in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from 891, which mentions Irish pilgrims who are said to be en route to Rome (another source says they were continuing on to Jerusalem).
How can you find more concrete evidence of such things as commercial travel between East and West in the period c. 1000? Will you be dealing with sea navigation only? Probably not, since the Irish go to Rome by way of England (they could also sail directly for the Continent).
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