Trains Over Planes: A cheaper, greener way to travel

An edited version of this article was published on the National Student website on the 9th Jul 18

Trains are greener than planes, they can also be cheaper, even affordable. This may be surprising to a British reader, but I’ve done the 200-mile journey from Florence to Milan in only an hour and a half, faster than any British train, for £18. To holiday train-travel is actually viable once you leave our island nation, in fact it’s often cleaner, comfier, faster, more punctual and crucially cheaper.

Unfortuately of course, trains practically reduce your range, probably to just western and central Europe. Plus, you’ve got to get to the continent first, which depending on where you live could mean an expensive (British) train journey to the coast, but the whole point of this train-over-plane method is that getting there is half the fun. I recommend getting a coach to the coast and then a ferry – the north-east and east coast can get you to Germany and Holland, and the south coast can get you to France. Thisismoney.co.uk recommend SeaFrance for getting you from Dover to Calais for £50. Don’t worry landlubbers, the crossing’s only 90 minutes.

By all means, you can try getting further afield the long way, without flying, as cheaply as possible as a challenge – embrace your inner Phileas Fogg! In modern times we all have obsessions with rushing from A to B, at least most of us do, I know I do. It’s nice to take the time out to experience an oft-overlooked aspect of travelling: the actual travelling. That is, the feeling of moving, the anticipation of taking the longer route and knowing that every minute you’re hurtling towards a new exciting place.

I’ve noticed that on planes, despite travelling at over 600mph, you never feel like you’re actually moving anywhere fast. Sure you get the rumble of the engines and the ohgodwejustdropped inertia, but the clouds and continents below, though beautiful, crawl slowly by thanks to the perspective. On trains however, seeing the changing landscape whip past – forget on-flight entertainment, by taking the train you get a complimentary 4’ flatscreen display of the landscape you’re soon to be exploring or the countryside in which your city weekend is nestled. I often get this feeling just on my journeys home from uni at the holidays, there’s just something both relaxing and exhilarating at watching the country roads tear past.

Alternatively, if you happen to be making long journeys you could save yourself the price of accommodation by taking a night/sleeper train. This is a super sneaky tactic, probably familiar to any past Interrailers out there, keeping holiday costs down while providing a novel experience that seems to belong more to a bygone era than our own.

Here are some exciting ideas to pursue: there’s the interrail global pass which gives you travel on European trains on a set number of days within a set period of time, though remember, it takes more than a couple days to see a city properly. Interrail passes for individual countries are also available, which is probably a more sensible way to get to know a country than what you can pick from whizzing through 10 of them in a month. Trains in Eastern Europe are also very cheap, and the large distances it to traverse say Poland, Belarus, or Ukraine can give the excuse for those 8+ hour journeys that you can use for rolling accommodation. As a curve ball, there’s always the North Island Explorer, a bit like New Zealand’s answer to though, er, good luck getting therewithout flying.