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many reasons why surface travel rocks
- Out the window you will not see clouds, which are pretty but get old fast. You will see rolling hills, spring buds, gambolling lambs, picturesque canals with colourful boats, interestingly decrepit old factories and rusting industry, daffodils, castles, primroses, ponies and rainbows.
- And the windows are bigger.
- Train food is a hell of a lot nicer and cheaper than plane food. Or you can bring your own yummy food and eat it when you like, when you feel hungry...
- because you have your bag with you for almost the whole journey.
- You know your bag is in the same country as you.
- You can throw your razor, your tweezers, hairspray and a bottle of perfume in it without getting arrested.
- Less than 10 minutes standing in queues, total.
- No one will make you take your shoes off.
- No one will search right down to inside the caps of your markers in your pencil case, while you hold your trousers up with one hand and hold your shoes in the other, because you've been told not to put them back on yet as there's a secondary shoe check up ahead.
- Generally, you will not be treated like a strange hybrid of potential terrorist and cash cow.
- You spend most of the journey actually getting closer to your destination, not rattling round in a consumer Habitrail with nothing to entertain your eyes but ads for stupid aspirational shit you don't need.
- You can bring a musical instrument or other fragile thing without it being taken from you, losing its Fragile sticker as it bumps down the belt, and tumbling out on to the baggage carousel in several pieces at the far end.
- No one is going to make you listen to tinny jingles that go 'let's fly let's fly let's fly Ryanair' over the most mindless stupid-house beat you can imagine, while you sit trapped in a narrow seat with your elbows scrunched in, unable to escape.
- You can listen to music when you want, not just in a twenty-minute window in the middle of the flight while the seatbelt sign is briefly off and you can barely hear it anyway.
- They won't charge you ten quid to check in and twenty for each of your bags.
- You can sprawl in the bigger seats and put your stuff all over the table.
- Tables.
- You get to go on an actual boat! On the actual sea!
- Catamaran go wheeeee! Crosses Irish Sea in two hours!
- Sailing into Dublin Bay on a beautiful cloudy-bright evening is, just, wow.
- You will actually get a sense of the size and the texture of the land you're passing through.
- It doesn't cost £25 just to get to your train.
- Drinks on trains and boats don't come in disturbing let's-patronise-the-poor foil bags with "BUY ONE GET ONE FREE FREE FREE FREE!!!!" written all over them. Also, they are normal size.
- No weird nose-desiccating dry stale air or ear-popping.
- If the airport bus gets snarled up on the M25 and you miss your plane, you have to pay loads of money to change your flight. If you miss your boat, you shrug and get on the next one.
- Counting airport taxes, baggage charges and airport bus, it works out about the same price as if you'd got 1p flights each way. Except it always costs that, no matter when you book. (Edit: this is just for the Oxford-Dublin journey. For some reason the sail/rail price is much less than just rail to Holyhead, and it seems to be fixed at £58.)
- It took me six hours door-to-door to fly home for Christmas, and I was left a frazzled rage-filled sore-eared wreck. Oxford to Dublin over land takes eight to ten hours, not that much of a difference, and I floated off the boat like a blissed-out Buddha.
Seriously, guys, it was awesome. And that's without even going near the greenness of it. I want to go on trains all over Europe now.
- And the windows are bigger.
- Train food is a hell of a lot nicer and cheaper than plane food. Or you can bring your own yummy food and eat it when you like, when you feel hungry...
- because you have your bag with you for almost the whole journey.
- You know your bag is in the same country as you.
- You can throw your razor, your tweezers, hairspray and a bottle of perfume in it without getting arrested.
- Less than 10 minutes standing in queues, total.
- No one will make you take your shoes off.
- No one will search right down to inside the caps of your markers in your pencil case, while you hold your trousers up with one hand and hold your shoes in the other, because you've been told not to put them back on yet as there's a secondary shoe check up ahead.
- Generally, you will not be treated like a strange hybrid of potential terrorist and cash cow.
- You spend most of the journey actually getting closer to your destination, not rattling round in a consumer Habitrail with nothing to entertain your eyes but ads for stupid aspirational shit you don't need.
- You can bring a musical instrument or other fragile thing without it being taken from you, losing its Fragile sticker as it bumps down the belt, and tumbling out on to the baggage carousel in several pieces at the far end.
- No one is going to make you listen to tinny jingles that go 'let's fly let's fly let's fly Ryanair' over the most mindless stupid-house beat you can imagine, while you sit trapped in a narrow seat with your elbows scrunched in, unable to escape.
- You can listen to music when you want, not just in a twenty-minute window in the middle of the flight while the seatbelt sign is briefly off and you can barely hear it anyway.
- They won't charge you ten quid to check in and twenty for each of your bags.
- You can sprawl in the bigger seats and put your stuff all over the table.
- Tables.
- You get to go on an actual boat! On the actual sea!
- Catamaran go wheeeee! Crosses Irish Sea in two hours!
- Sailing into Dublin Bay on a beautiful cloudy-bright evening is, just, wow.
- You will actually get a sense of the size and the texture of the land you're passing through.
- It doesn't cost £25 just to get to your train.
- Drinks on trains and boats don't come in disturbing let's-patronise-the-poor foil bags with "BUY ONE GET ONE FREE FREE FREE FREE!!!!" written all over them. Also, they are normal size.
- No weird nose-desiccating dry stale air or ear-popping.
- If the airport bus gets snarled up on the M25 and you miss your plane, you have to pay loads of money to change your flight. If you miss your boat, you shrug and get on the next one.
- Counting airport taxes, baggage charges and airport bus, it works out about the same price as if you'd got 1p flights each way. Except it always costs that, no matter when you book. (Edit: this is just for the Oxford-Dublin journey. For some reason the sail/rail price is much less than just rail to Holyhead, and it seems to be fixed at £58.)
- It took me six hours door-to-door to fly home for Christmas, and I was left a frazzled rage-filled sore-eared wreck. Oxford to Dublin over land takes eight to ten hours, not that much of a difference, and I floated off the boat like a blissed-out Buddha.
Seriously, guys, it was awesome. And that's without even going near the greenness of it. I want to go on trains all over Europe now.
no subject
Today, it's down to four hours and only one change (in Chester) and I suspect that the reliability has improved...
Trouble is, the fare's eighty quid and we haven't factored in the ferry; another ninety minutes with the supercat and God Knows how long with the old-fashioned boat... Plus boarding times and I saw the foot passengers queueing just as long as the cars...
I can't see it happening in less than seven or eight hours, and I don't see change of a hundred quid: sod Ryanair, there's BA and Aer Lingus business-class tickets available for that, and I've frequently done the trip from desk to Dublin in four hours. And time, for some, really is money: a day of my life - and my holiday allowance - has a measurable cost.
Travel to the Continent, however, is a very different matter; Eurostar try very hard to reproduce the travel-by-air experience of airport hassle, but it's still the best way to get to Paris, Bruges, Brussels, and a vast swathe of European cities less than two hours journey on the TGV from Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est.
no subject
And yes, they've modernised that line up to Manchester now so it's pretty speedy. I did get delayed by half an hour on the way back, but it wasn't a big deal.
no subject
Aer Lingus is a bit nicer than Ryanair, but they too seem to have a new surprise charge every time I go home with them.