I love international travel. I also love international flights. I also know that climate change is destroying our planet and going to cause misery for millions of people. While there are many arguments around ‘the plane is going anyway’ and ‘you can just offset it’, I feel that doing some low carbon train travel will reduce my personal carbon footprint and help demonstrate that there is demand for such things. My family went on holiday by ferry to Sweden in the 1980s, a ferry route that no longer exists.
I am by no means perfect, and sometimes I can’t resist a long-haul trip. One thing I have found is that sometimes flying one way has been the only way to get to some places I wanted to go to in the time I had available. So I have trained back from Morocco, and back from Bulgaria, having flown out. I have also done weeklong ski trips with a train both ways, using the Eurostar from London to Brussels and the sleeper from Brussels to Salzburg. Feeling like a bit of a veteran, here are some of my thoughts…
Make the journey part of the holiday
There was no way that coming back from either Morocco or Bulgaria was going to be possible in 24 or even 48 hours. Travelling from Morocco by myself, I stopped in Algeciras, then headed to Barcelona via Madrid. This was not exactly enroute but I had always wanted to visit and booked a spare room in a local family’s flat and got to spend an evening and a morning there. I also accidently did a really famous and beautiful train line between Algeciras and Madrid, which makes me want to visit southern Spain again. Coming from Bulgaria, we had an amazing time exploring the ruin bars of Budapest (including amazing DJs but also random chap with a guitar and a love of 90s indie classics), recovering in some traditional thermal baths and then stopping in Prague for quite a different tourist experience. I have found that quickly getting through some places to allow longer to explore in one place works better for me.
Is it more expensive and slower?
Well, probably yes and yes, depending on where you are going. As I live in Cornwall, the fact that an interrail pass covers your inbound and outbound journey (i.e. getting to London) does sometimes mean it’s not that different from booking a cheap flight from somewhere like Luton and then realising there’s no possible way to get to the airport at that awful time of the morning and having to book an airport hotel the night before (can’t think how I found that out… must have been a friend who told me). Interrail passes give you a certain number of days of train travel in Europe for a certain price, and there are student discounts. My partner used to grumble a bit about the time taken but now he has realised he can work on the train, the grumbles have gone!
Planning and practicalities
The Man in Seat 61 really got me started on some of the longer and more complicated trips. Highly recommend! The Trainline now has quite a good EU travel planner and the Interrail Rail Planner app is great for Europe, letting you plan multiday trips and then apply any interrail passes you might have. It also directs you to all the relevant rail company websites if you need to pay supplements for sleepers etc. I will say that these quite often shave off minutes by making you do lots of complicated changes – instead double check if you can get longer distance trains… and on that note, avoid changing in Germany if you can, because while their trains are lovely, they seem to very rarely run on time.
The Interrail passes are great, especially if you can be more flexible and have more time to spend exploring. Most of the large intercity and inter country trains have free and reasonable wifi so you can check for accommodation and things to do on the way, and download any local maps or directions you might need. As I have limited time off, I tend to be on a schedule, which means planning and booking in advance. It can take some time. Travelling by sleeper can save you time and money spent on accommodation, and there are new routes in the pipeline for Paris to Madrid. Choosing your destination based on easy access from some of the main train routes can also help!
Travelling by train in Europe, Morocco, Thailand and India has been a great way to see different bits of the country or continent, chat to others travelling or local people, and see swathes of countryside you might not otherwise. Can highly recommend!