many reasons why surface travel rocks

[devi]

- 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.

Comments

[natural20.livejournal.com]

I just drove Dublin - Edinburgh (and back, obv) and while I agree with a lot of what you say (almost all of it), there is the point that it took roughly ten hours door to door on land, whereas it'd be about three hours by plane. It adds up, sadly.

On-island I just don't take the plane any more. I've done the maths, I know of the stress reduction, train or car ftw. But when I'm going off-island, plane is still my default.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It makes a big difference if you live near the airport, though. And I don't any more. When I lived in Dublin it seemed much easier because time to the airport wasn't a big factor. I even used to take cabs to the airport, which is inconceivable now.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Aeroplanes are cooler than boats or trains, times a billion.

That's why we're going by land and sea to Greece

[tortipede.livejournal.com]

a strange hybrid of potential terrorist and cash cow
Terror-cow says "Moooo!"
(Now I have to learn to cartoon, so that I can draw that.)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

+ you can bring yr bike with you.

I <3 trains and boats for travel.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

I want to train round Europe with a camera and a laptop, geeking and sightseeing as I go.

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Air travel is eating itself with its general awfulness.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thing is, my younger self would have agreed with you 100%. I grew up flying a lot. The idea of flying is rooted deep in my dreams and my imagination. But modern commercial flying... no, all the adventure and romance has been beaten out of it, for me. It became more and more of a struggle to feel the wonder.

Flying across America on a clear day is still utterly amazing, though.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

There is that, too. Mum couldn't fit my bike in her car, and my homehome village is too far from everything for it to really be useful, but if I was ever coming back to Dublin just to hang out with my friends...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It is actually getting more awful, isn't it? It isn't just the romance of childhood holidays fading away?

Re: That's why we're going by land and sea to Greece

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

hahaha, terror-cow. Please do.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

oh, me too.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I want to go on trains all over Europe now.

This is one of the best things I have ever done. Recommended!

[paste.livejournal.com]

i travelled around the states & canada by train, it was amazing, in terms of scenery, convenience and space! so yes, trains all the way. in june i will be catching a train from somewhere in provence to barcelona, i can't wait.

and for all your future train needs, around the whole world!

[tackline.livejournal.com]

I recommend Milan-Zurich (the William Tell line). There is a slight danger that your ears might pop though.

[shermarama]

I have been to Tilberg in the Netherlands for a music festival twice now; once we went by train and ferry and train, which was entertaining but quite slow (six hours on the ferry, but there was a free buffet of all the things truck drivers like to eat, and we had a cabin and everything) and once we went by train the entire way, which was easily as fast as the plane would have been and entirely comfortable and pleasant. The speed was at least partly due to how close to St. Pancras I live, but even so - overland travel definitely rules.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That is a very cool site.

I want to take a sleeper train from here to Barcelona some time soon.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I can handle the ear-popping if I'm looking at spectacular mountains while it's going on!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I might pick your brains at Bangface...

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... It's good to hear a contemporary opinion, because London-to-Holyhead used to be a five-hour rail journey and everyone I knew who'd done it had a nightmare of missed connections, delays and cancellations. Leicester-to-Holyhead was even worse...

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.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hello!

yes, there are certain journeys that i totally wouldn't even think about flying for (scottishland, brussels, paris), but we were looking at berlin and i think it's *just* too far to realistically train all the way, much as i would like to. we're contemplating bilbao as well, i think that might be slightly more doable due to tgv goodness.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

and by "realistically" i mean "realistically as part of a four day holiday", obv it's not actually impossible, but it's an overnight trip...

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree too. Going from Chicago to Seattle by train was fantastic - it was two nights on the train which sounds awful, but it flew by.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Eighty quid? It was fifty-eight the lot for me. It's cheaper when you're buying a sail-rail ticket, and I understand that fare is fixed.

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.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I'd like to try that too. Been meaning to go back to Amsterdam for (oh my god I'm old) ten years.