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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
Yeah, certainly to Scotland the difference in price varies each way. Oddly too, while it may be expensive to fly on, say, a Friday, but cheap to get back on the Sunday, the train fares are sometimes the other way round, so if you are clever you can travel by one mode in one direction and the other in the other, and save money. It does take rather a lot of investigating and planning though...
- 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.
There is a BIG difference between six and ten hours. I've found six hours is the minimum required to get from my house, fly, and arrive at most destinations in near Europe. You then have half the day left. The extra four hours for long (or slow) journeys is the painful bit, when you really just want to be there, and means the difference between halfing half a day free and basically spending a whole day travelling.
A few points of my own in defence of flying:
- Flying is not a romantic way to travel. This is a hangover from the pre-budget flights era before the masses were allowed to travel as freely as they/we do now. If you expect it to be romantic, exotic, or even enjoyable, you will indeed be disappointed. It is for getting from A to B as fast, cheaply and painlessly as possible.
- Training it around Europe is not cheaper than flying, enough though trains are cheaper than in the UK. I've looked into it a couple of times, and it can actually be offputtingly expensive :-/
- My annual leave is a very precious thing to me, and I like to spend as much as possible of it wherever it is I want to be, not travelling there and back. Should I ever have a lot more spare time (and no less money, so that's unlikely) then trains will be a lot more attractive.
- Apart from the occasional stunning views, plane travel tends to be rather boring more than actually painful, so long as you don't cause stress for yourself by running late or not planning ahead sufficiently.
- I think it is AMAZING that we can travel as easily and as cheaply and as hassle free all over Europe (in particular) as we can, and it's something to be taken advantage of.
Btw, I just drew "Eurotrek" as my Grand National horse in the office sweepstake, which seems rather appropriate right now...
p.s. sorry, I seem to have written rather a lot, I didn't mean to do that!
p.p.s. I also apologise for the overuse of the word "amazing" and promise to be a bit more imaginative next time ;-)
YMMV, again
Luggage for me is not just about carrying the right clothes / shoes (and
Hopping around the airport carrying belts, shoes, other paraphernalia is very annoying to me, partly because I'm not sure that it necessarily does make me as safe as it makes me inconvenienced. (Same with the liquids thing - it always feels like they're stopping the previous threat by the time that it's no longer popular, not anticipating any new ones.) I do aim to minimise this by wearing appropriate clothing to travel in but it's still annoying. In winter I am also burdened by coat and umpteen layers of warm clothing because I feel the cold and wouldn't want to deprive myself of the ability to keep warm; but it adds quite a bit to the inconvenience.
There is quite a big difference between 6 hours and 10 hours, granted; and I felt it pretty strongly when I went by Eurostar / TGV to the south of France a few years ago. It took all day and I was only on a short break, so I did think that for that trip it wasn't the best choice. But in principle I'd rather schedule in the extra time, if at all possible, and travel in what I'd consider to be a much more pleasant manner; that is, in considering the travel itself to be part of the fun part of the holiday. This would mostly apply to train journeys rather than to car trips, but in any case I can see that this is certainly in the realm of individual choice and individual values.