From how to 'climate-proof' your home and commute to embracing planet-friendly food, tech and travel, our senior climate correspondent Louise Boyle will be talking to the experts, including Director of Flight Free UK Anna Hughes, The Man In Seat 61 Mark Smith and former travel editor Helen Coffey to reveal their top tips and tricks for being greener in 2024.
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00:00 Hello and thank you for joining the Independence latest virtual event on slow travel. I'm Louise
00:05 Boyle, Senior Climate Correspondent and today I'm joined by travel industry experts who will share
00:10 their knowledge with you on how you can reduce flying but still enjoy your holidays while keeping
00:15 the budget in check. First up we have Mark Smith, better known as Man in seat 61. Mark started his
00:23 website as a hobby in 2001 but his site has grown into an invaluable resource for millions of people
00:29 who are planning trips by rail and ferry around the world. We're also joined by Anna Hughes,
00:36 Director of Flights Free UK. It's a charity focused on reducing the number of flights that
00:41 people take and challenges people to spend a year without flying. Finally we have the
00:46 Independence-owned Helen Coffey who took up Anna's challenge in 2020 and ran with it. She's the first
00:53 UK travel editor to swear off flying and wrote a book about her experiences called Zero Altitude.
00:59 Over the next hour we'll touch on the current problems of the travel industry and its focus
01:03 on flying before offering practical steps you can take to make your holidays more sustainable
01:08 and hopefully more fun and relaxing to boot. We will start off with a bit of a panel discussion
01:13 with our guests and then leave plenty of time for Q&A at the end. So to begin I'd like to start
01:20 with you Anna and Mark, a question for you both. How have we ended up here with flying? Why is it
01:27 that so much of the travel industry revolves around flying?
01:31 Shall I take that one first? Please. I think a lot of it comes down to cost so that's the thing
01:40 that influences most of us in many actions in our lives and the dawn of budget airlines means that
01:48 we can go to new places or get fast to places that kind of on a whim you know you don't really
01:59 have to consider it you don't have to clock up your annual leave and save up for months to have
02:05 a holiday you can just turn up at the airport at the weekend with a bag packed and see what's
02:10 available. So that's kind of facilitated that style of travel and it's then become embedded in
02:19 our lives and one of the things that we look at at the charity Flight Free UK we look at behavior
02:24 change and why people make the decisions they do and while it's driven by cost and convenience it
02:30 also then becomes a thing so we fly because everybody flies or we think everybody flies you
02:37 know it's social it's a social norm to jump on a plane to have your holiday and then we kind of
02:42 forget there are other options. Yeah it's certainly much easier for the travel industry to package
02:51 people off in coaches and planes. They find it much more difficult to plan a journey across Europe
02:59 by train because of course it is a fragmented industry and the rail industry doesn't help
03:05 itself by not offering pricing and schedules way ahead when package tour companies want to sell
03:11 holiday packages. Anna can you give us a sense of what how much of the global carbon footprint is
03:18 made up from flying? Yeah so it sounds like there should be a definitive answer to this right?
03:25 It's not quite so easy so often you'll hear the two percent figure quoted oh aviation is only
03:33 responsible for two percent of global emissions so we don't need to worry about it. That's often
03:38 given by the industry so no surprises they'll kind of err on the low side. Scientists are broadly in
03:43 agreement that it's about three to five percent of global warming emissions and some people put it
03:51 even higher because your emissions at altitude are more potent than emissions at ground level so you
03:59 can probably triple the effect the warming effect but the most important aspect of that is the
04:08 reason that it's low is not because aviation emissions are low it's because hardly anyone
04:13 flies globally so we're looking at between five and ten percent of the global population in any
04:19 given year will step on a plane and that kind of distorts the figures. If we look on a more local
04:27 level it's around about nine percent for UK emissions and then on an even more local level if
04:33 you look at your individual contribution your individual carbon output it could make up around
04:37 half or more perhaps depending on where you're flying how often so yeah it's not insignificant.
04:43 Yeah absolutely and we know those emissions are going up because more and more people
04:47 in different countries are flying by the year it's only only increasing. Helen hello let me
04:52 turn to you now with a question how would you define slow travel? So kind of on the face I think
04:59 people often just think slow travel means instead of hopping on a plane you take other
05:04 transports that take longer so you might take the train instead you might take a ferry you might
05:09 cycle you might walk which obviously is kind of a big part of it but for me slow travel is a bigger
05:17 bigger sort of mindset shift about what we think travel is how we want to interact with it how we
05:23 want to take our kind of leisure travel holidays things like that and partly it's and I'm very
05:29 guilty of not doing this so I'm like not always practicing what I preach but it's if you're
05:34 planning to instead of you know flying off to Croatia say if you're planning on getting the
05:39 train okay that's going to take longer so what are the opportunities around that on the way
05:45 are there places you could stop off could you have a day in another city and then maybe continue
05:50 your journey and then stop off somewhere else to kind of go sightseeing or go walking and then
05:55 eventually make your way there in a way that makes your journey quite a big part of the holiday the
06:01 holiday isn't just destination just what we get with flying but almost no one enjoys flying there
06:06 are a couple of freaks out there good for you we walk our own stuff but most people would not say
06:12 I can't wait to get to the airport again that's what a lovely experience that would be whereas
06:17 when you lean into slow travel a big part of it is like oh my gosh I can't wait to take this
06:22 magnificent train journey that everyone's told me about for me I actually adore getting ferries like
06:28 I love a long ferry I love an overnight ferry I love looking out onto the waves like it's
06:33 zen and calming for me so it's leaning into that aspect of being really important and you can also
06:40 even translate that into when you get to a place I think if you if you've shifted your mindset about
06:45 what travel is and slowing down instead of it becoming this endless tick list especially with
06:51 a city break of right I've just got these things all the top things I need to see and do just so
06:56 I can say I've done them and probably record them for social media as proof rather than just lean
07:02 into like enjoying them and slowing down and actually maybe I'm enjoying this gallery so much
07:07 I'll spend three four hours there because it's just so enjoyable I'm not going to have this
07:12 itinerary just to prove that I've squeezed every last drop out of this trip I'm going to try and
07:18 dig a little deeper I'm going to go and see things more fully more mindfully I guess and be more
07:24 present in that experience. So you've been you've been flight free for the past four years and I
07:31 wonder what are some of the you know the upsides of it but what are some of the challenges that
07:35 you've faced as well? I think it's been way more positives than negatives and I have Anna actually
07:44 to thank for my flight free status because she was the one that first introduced me to the pledge
07:50 and I was just going to take it for a year and then it's ended up just going on so I just started
07:56 it in 2020 and obviously Covid year most people were flight free but I wanted it to feel more of
08:02 a joy and yeah part you know I kept it going in part because speaking to scientists and activists
08:11 and researchers it was kind of unignorable that emissions from flying are really bad and we need
08:17 to be reducing them and as much as people try and pretend it's complicated it's kind of as simple as
08:22 that it doesn't mean everyone has to immediately stop flying but it is that simple we need to be
08:26 reducing but a big part of it was just that experience and how enjoyable it was so finding
08:34 yeah finding myself looking forward to a journey as much as where I was going and kind of telling
08:39 people about it excitedly and people being really interested in how I was getting there
08:43 and nearly every journey I've taken not flying has in some way or another been enriching or fun
08:50 it doesn't always go perfectly let's not pretend it does but I don't look back at any of them with
08:55 the kind of the stress I think I felt about flying and like that time to really see where you're
09:02 going and really feel that distance I think makes you feel like what you're doing like Mark's talked
09:09 about this before like real travel as opposed to just kind of blindly heading into a tin can and
09:15 then ending up somewhere completely different and you've got no relation to sort of how you got there
09:19 it's just happened and as for challenges I think like I've just now got a mindset of okay if someone
09:28 asked me to go to their 40th birthday in Valencia which they did last month for a weekend I can't go
09:34 like and I'm like oh that sounds nice but it's like with anything once you've made that decision
09:40 it's like well it's off the table for me so I'm not gonna spend ages mourning it I think the only
09:46 tough one I had was going to someone's wedding in southern Spain last year and I made it difficult
09:52 for myself because I did the journey out there all on coaches for 48 hours with no stops that was my
10:00 bad decision making rather than anything else and it was horrible it was really horrible but I survived
10:06 Yeah that sounds that sounds a bit rough. Mark you've been so immersed in the you know in
10:13 rail travel for you know for a couple of decades now and I just wondered if you can say what some
10:17 of the benefits have been for you over the years and you know any major challenges that have come
10:22 up maybe again and again for you. A couple of decades you're so kind to me. I started my
10:29 traveling by train in in my teens on school trips of the early 80s so yeah a few decades
10:36 and of course the climate thing wasn't there then it wasn't a thing I traveled down to the south of
10:44 France on the school French exchange on the on the boat train the channel ferry the sleeper train down
10:50 to Avignon and I thought this is fun the journey is as fun as as the destination and of course as
10:57 we've seen budget airlines take off if you'll pardon the pun travel has become a commodity
11:04 it's something you do and have to go through a slog in the beginning and end of your holiday
11:11 travel shouldn't be like that I was at dinner party once and the discussion went on to travel
11:16 and ended up with the airline travelers discussing whether this airline had 33 inch seat pitch or a
11:21 35 inch seat pitch I thought is that all you've got to discuss with travel oh gosh anyway no the
11:28 point about traveling by train and ship is that you see where you're going the journey is as fun
11:35 as the destination or certainly ought to be it's part of the holiday and that actually is going
11:41 back to what Helen was saying about a mindset change you've got to include the time and cost
11:47 of the journey as part of the holiday because it is and if you get it right I think there's a parallel
11:53 almost with mountaineering if you tell a mountaineer that it's just about getting to the
11:56 summit why doesn't he get helicopter you get some funny looks and yeah to a real traveler
12:01 telling people why don't you just jet there and do away with the journey well sometimes that's the
12:06 best bit so yes it does take longer but surprisingly not that much longer I mean people think it takes
12:15 a week to get to Italy by train now if you left you could have breakfast in London lunch in Paris
12:20 and dinner in Milan I mean I left I did a long weekend and ended up visiting Wroclaw in Poland
12:28 and place I'd always wanted to go to Sagan in Poland where the great escape happened Stalag Luft 3
12:35 and I took the afternoon Eurostar dinner in Brussels the overnight sleep of the new European
12:41 sleeper I had some afternoon in Wroclaw the following day I visited Stalag Luft 3 and then
12:48 came back on the sleeper so it can be done it's just you're not going to spend an afternoon going
12:53 to a stag do in Prague by train like you might do an easy jet but hey you don't really need to
12:59 have your stag do in Prague anyway because any pub in London is just as good I'm sure.
13:03 So I mean we've already discussed the fact that these are budget airlines so I guess the
13:09 inevitable question then is is slow travel as affordable or you know can it be is there a
13:14 way to do it in an affordable manner that's really a question to everyone.
13:18 Well I find that the well first of all that the railways have taken the leaf out of the
13:24 airlines books and the old days of a kilometric tariff across Europe that was fairly uncompetitive
13:31 even with the full service airlines has gone and train companies now offer their own dynamic
13:37 yield managed pricing so Eurostar will get you to Paris from 39 pounds each way you can then get a
13:44 ticket from Paris to Milan from 29 euros you can get from Amsterdam to Berlin from 37 euros 90.
13:51 The cheap fares are there if you book in advance if you're traveling a long distance you are
13:57 daisy-chaining an affordable fare for each segment of the journey whereas a one sector flight is
14:05 pretty much the same sort of price range whether it's London Prague or London Brussels so there
14:11 is that issue with the longer journeys but what I find is the journey is part of the experience
14:17 so it doesn't have to be cheaper than flying it just has to be affordable
14:21 that's the key thing and it certainly can be. And I think again I mean you know this is something
14:28 you said to me Mark before it changed my mindset is when you get something like a sleeper train
14:34 which are amazing because you're using that time when you'd be sleeping anyway it's dead time and
14:38 you're using it to get further you have to also see that as like well that's like if you'd had a
14:44 night in a hotel you know that's taking care of your kind of your travel and your accommodation
14:49 so even if it costs a little bit more like economically that's something to wrap your
14:54 head around as well. One of our best budget tips actually as well as well as taking the coach which
15:02 I know Helen just said her coach was a bit trying but generally coach travel is really good for
15:07 budget travellers but also look into interrail so I'm sure that you would recommend this as well
15:13 Mark. I think a lot of us think interrail is something you do when you leave uni or when
15:17 you're a teenager but actually if you're just going to a single destination you can make you
15:22 could probably halve the cost of your travel by getting an interrail pass it allows you to travel
15:27 for four days in a month and you are able to include leaving your own country to start with
15:36 and that can really help just overall bring the cost down.
15:41 Yeah there's a few different budget options.
15:46 I think the next question then is you know time you know other than money it's time and is it I
15:53 mean you've sort of started to address this by saying you know you've avoided that trip to
15:57 Valencia but how do people with you know who've got two weeks holiday in the summer with their
16:02 kids you know do you have any tips for them if they wanted to do more of a slow travel trip than
16:06 you know pack everyone on a an easy jet flight? I would probably recommend well first of all to
16:13 pick up on something Mark said earlier it's not necessarily it's not necessarily faster to fly
16:19 once you have factored in your transfer times your wait times I mean Helen and I went skiing last year
16:26 and we arrived in the resort at about 5pm and Helen said we'd probably still be on the coach
16:31 from the airport if we'd flown you know it's if you're traveling short haul it's there's not much
16:36 in it but also it is about looking especially if you're traveling with kids let's use that as an
16:42 example the holiday starts as soon as you arrive at St Pancras or the Dover wherever you're traveling
16:49 from because kids love a train they love a ferry so you know it doesn't matter that maybe overall
16:56 you would spend three days in your destination rather than five days but that's okay because
17:01 the travel was all part of it and very exciting and you can come back a different way and show
17:05 something new to the kids so it is it is partly acknowledging that actually flights it's not the
17:12 time spent in the air that you need to concentrate on it's the whole journey time but also you can
17:18 the time spent traveling is really time well spent. And also you know I think people have this thing
17:27 in their head if they like to travel or not and you know there's a certain contingent who love
17:31 a weekend away like a weekend European city break there are still loads of options that I have done
17:37 where I haven't taken any time off work obviously part of it is contingent on how near you are to
17:43 either kind of the Eurostar terminal or a ferry port but because of things like sleeper trains
17:49 I remember last year I did uh kind of finished work got the Eurostar to Paris caught there was
17:55 like a new sleeper train to Vienna and there was in Vienna at 10am on Saturday morning and I literally
18:01 had two days there and did the same thing on the way back and yeah I was maybe in the office
18:05 mid-morning rather than 9am but there are loads of options similar to that that are short haul
18:12 that if you're kind of a bit clever about it you don't actually have to take like all this massive
18:18 annual leave I mean of course that changes if you're going further and you want to keep going
18:22 like you know kind of go towards Eastern Europe but as Mark said it's still people have this idea
18:27 of it taking much longer I think than it does and it's up to you how quickly you'd like to take
18:33 that journey or whether you'd like to stop off along the way it doesn't have to be this
18:37 this massive barrier. We've talked quite a lot about um you know taking journeys to Europe and
18:43 going you know to going abroad say from the UK but do you find that you know with sort of limiting
18:48 or not flying at all that you're taking a lot more vacations at home and finding ways to sort
18:53 of explore closer to home really? I think yes and part of our messaging at Flight Free UK is to say
19:03 you can explore the UK too that is a legit holiday don't overlook what we have here on our shores
19:09 um there is you know there's fantastic city breaks here there's incredible wildlife there's some
19:14 wonderful scenery there are mountains there's skiing if you want it there's
19:17 sea swimming there's lakes there's there's everything you could want here so we shouldn't
19:23 overlook it um and yeah it's I mean your world is as big as you make it really like you it even if
19:31 you love kind of far-flung travel you could you could spend your entire life in the UK and still
19:36 never see everything there is to offer right so you know it it's it's how you definitely how you
19:41 look at it I know we're going to bang on about that it's all in the mindset but yeah we definitely
19:46 shouldn't overlook what's on our shores. So I want to make sure we get lots of time for Q&A at the
19:54 end of this because we have had a lot of questions um but I wanted to ask you all this um just before
20:00 we move on um you know what has your favorite slow travel trip been and what is your top tip for
20:06 people um for this kind of quality? It's quite hard actually because I haven't even done as many
20:18 as these two but I think all of them hold a special place in my heart um but I think possibly my
20:23 favorite was a trip I took to Spain because I took the ferry from Portsmouth to I think Bilbao
20:31 which I just love that ferry it's like two nights on a ferry and no one can bother me and maybe I'm
20:36 a massive introvert very appealing to me like I don't turn the internet on I've downloaded
20:42 loads of films I'm like watching for dolphins having a glass of wine like I'm very very happy
20:47 even with that bit without even getting there and then I sort of planned this trip um with my ex at
20:54 the time where I he'd got an Airbnb on the north coast in a surf town we spent a couple of days
21:00 there then got the train along to San Sebastian spent a night there and it is just as beautiful
21:06 as people say and the food is just as good as people say and then I was like right I'm gonna
21:11 just go off on my own I'm gonna get the coach to Valencia where I'd never been so I have been to
21:15 Valencia but part of a bigger trip um had an amazing couple of days there was eating all the
21:21 food was on the beach then got the train up to Barcelona to meet up with my boyfriend again
21:27 and we had like two amazing nights in Barcelona and these were all places I'd never been before
21:32 either so it was just really exciting and then I think he flew home but I got the fast train from
21:40 Barcelona to Paris and then I was like oh I've got a friend who lives in Paris let's go out for dinner
21:44 then got the Eurostar home so it was this amazing it felt like this really epic adventure which I
21:50 think often countries that are close to us like Spain or France if you're flying it doesn't feel
21:55 that exciting for lots of people whereas if you're doing it like that and it's kind of a
22:00 multi-destination trip it becomes something completely different where like I thought I'd
22:05 have the most exciting holiday of anyone I'd met for you know several months and was telling
22:10 everyone about it and it still didn't take you know super amounts of time off work I think it
22:14 was like eight days all together um so yeah that's probably my top one.
22:23 Mark can you share yours with us? Oh well some years ago before the war in Syria I headed off
22:29 to Istanbul by train which still has a cache even today I found an awful lot of interest in it
22:34 and decided to I was with my wife we decided to push it and catch what was then the weekly
22:40 sleeping car down to Aleppo in Syria and caught train to Damascus and then the old Hejaz railway
22:45 to Amman and made it to Aqaba the Gulf of Aqaba and back by train over land and that was quite
22:53 adventurous and quite epic and the feeling you get from achieving something like that over land
22:59 without the airliner thing is is great there's nothing like it and the things you see on the
23:06 way and the people you meet I have a different view of Syria because I've been there and I've
23:12 talked to the people and found the most hospitable people that I've ever met so it's that sort of
23:16 thing it's the richness of the experience you get when you travel over land it takes more to plan
23:22 a trip like that in fact rail travels the other way around it takes a lot of effort to find out
23:29 about it and plan it doing it is great with air travel it's so easy to just book a flight isn't
23:35 it too easy but doing it is a nightmare I'd rather have the challenge and then the great experience
23:41 I'd rather have it that way around every time yeah. Before I share mine I want to
23:51 just kind of bring that point home about cultural exchanges and understanding the world because lots
23:58 of people say to us at Flight Free UK oh but you're cutting yourself off from the rest of
24:03 the world and you know how how are we going to understand each other and all that kind of stuff
24:07 and I completely agree that travel gives us so much but I don't think air travel gives us that
24:13 because we do just everything's unconnected whereas when you travel over land you do connect
24:18 with the landscapes with the cultures with the shifting cultures the shifting food and everything
24:24 else so I would use for my example of my favorite slow travel the ultimate in slow travel which is
24:29 cycling I mean I know walking slower but I'm a cyclist and I do a lot of cycle touring in the UK
24:35 and I do a lot of sea swimming in the UK and I decided one year to switch that for switch the
24:41 North Sea for the Mediterranean and I cycled to Nice and I really earned that sea swim
24:47 and I know not everyone's going to cycle to Nice but I did get the train back so
24:52 it's perfectly possible to have a wonderful weekend or week in Nice on the French Riviera
24:58 and either go by bike or by train. That's amazing I'm going to turn now to the questions because
25:06 we've just had so many and I see the Q&A box is filling up with a lot here and so let me get
25:10 started with one this one came to us from Andrew Ingram and it's also one I'm noticing and someone
25:17 Marianne Talbot has put in the chat as well so I mean you know if you can be like Helen and be
25:23 flight free but a lot of people still have a reason that they need to fly Marianne's mentioned her
25:28 daughter is studying in Tennessee Andrew spoke about his family in Toronto they take one flight
25:32 a year so if people are going to make a handful of flights a year what can you tell us about
25:38 offsetting what's a good way to do that yeah I wonder if you guys can dig into that subject
25:42 I don't we might have different opinions on this which is totally fine because I don't think there
25:48 is one answer because yeah one thing I always say to people and they're like but my yeah my
25:54 daughter lives in Australia I don't think I've ever spoken to any activist who or campaigner or
26:01 environmentalist even who is like yeah well you should just never see your kid again if you care
26:06 about the planet like no one is saying that but it's obviously unreasonable for us so I think like
26:13 with any sustainability thing you know we always say you really well you measure first so look at
26:18 what you're doing at the moment count up how many air miles how many flights per year and then you
26:23 reduce as much as you can you cut back cut back cut back and there will be for some people there
26:29 will be this kind of line where it's like well I can't reduce anymore like for me I'm lucky I don't
26:34 have any loved ones who live you know across the world so it's fine for me to do it but I fully
26:40 accept not everyone's in that position and I think it was George Bombo the journalist who
26:46 coined the term or at least popularized it of love miles which are different to air miles
26:51 so they're to see people that you need to be you need to go and see your daughter fine I think
26:57 once you get down to that and this is where we might differ I think if you've reduced as much
27:03 as you can there is worth offsetting with kind of robust schemes that you research that you believe
27:10 in they're not created equal we know that it's getting better because there are more systems
27:17 in place but again it's like the king train travel it's not the easiest thing in the world
27:22 to immediately be like great you know click that's that's sorted a general rule of thumb
27:28 from what I have researched and seen is that you want to go for things that are carbon removals
27:34 so these are projects that actually in some way sometimes very you know scientific crazy machines
27:39 that's like sucking carbon out of the atmosphere so if you're really thinking about a real offset
27:44 like I emitted this much and I'd like to take that away there are schemes that are much more
27:50 in the realm of doing that so that's what I would look out for if I really wanted to meaningfully
27:55 offset yeah and I do yeah just just a small amount because of course as Helen said like
28:03 we can't all just completely avoid flights all forever but um the the difficulty we have with
28:10 offsetting is mainly the concept of it and the way it's pushed by airlines because they make us
28:17 believe that we can just pay a little amount and our remittance don't count and therefore we continue
28:22 our polluting behavior so as Helen said it's got to be reduced as much as possible and then it's
28:29 reasonable to want to compensate the rest and I would encourage people to to do that for sure but
28:38 don't call it an offset because it isn't really um we're every so often we'll have another story
28:44 in the paper which talks about how offsetting schemes just don't work so actually it's probably
28:49 better to give a donation to a charity that is working for environmental protection like the
28:55 woodland trust like any charity that you already know is probably quite quite good if you already
29:00 have a relationship with a particular charity that does work to protect the environment it can be
29:05 anything any charity that works on climate change including flight for UK go to our website
29:11 just a small plug there just a small one and this is a question this is this is one that um
29:17 actually hits home for me is um Susan Leckie has written that travel to Europe from London is
29:22 self-evidently easier than traveling from somewhere like Glasgow for example and further north
29:26 so does that mean that non-air travel to Europe is completely impractical for travelers say further
29:31 north than than London well if I can come in here we have we've had the answer already and it's
29:38 use an interrail pass because an interrail pass covers your outward journey from wherever wherever
29:43 you happen to live so if you guess you're right if you're if you're up in Scotland uh you can use
29:49 the first day on your interrail pass to come all the way down from Scotland then hop on a Eurostar
29:54 to Brussels say and then hop on another train to Cologne you're in Cologne and you've just used one
29:59 roughly 50 euros a day day on your your pass with a 30 euro uh Eurostar fee so that can make it a
30:09 lot cheaper to come down from further afield or the west country or Wales or somewhere like that
30:13 and the other thing of course is you've got ferries so if you live in the west country catch
30:18 a ferry from Plymouth or the south coast catch a ferry from Portsmouth to France there are also
30:23 ferries from Newcastle and Hull straight to the Netherlands where you can pick up trains to Germany
30:29 or Prague or wherever we've actually got lots of stories on our website of families and individuals
30:37 from places like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lancaster, Newcastle who are doing flight free journeys
30:43 to Europe so that might help to just see oh that's how that person did it oh it is possible
30:49 you know and it as we've already said the journey is part of it so even though that journey will
30:53 take five or six hours longer than if you started in London it's still all part of it and it's still
30:58 perfectly possible. Yeah absolutely there's nothing better than the train from London to Glasgow I
31:04 will say I highly highly recommend that one. So the next question we have comes from Eva Jolly
31:10 and this is a question that a couple of people have asked again and Eva says as a 60 plus year
31:15 old looking to travel across Europe and what are the best sites for looking for independent train
31:20 travel and then Anne Galpin also asks about accessible travel options for disabled or older
31:26 travellers if you have any ideas and thoughts on that. Well in terms of booking the train travel
31:33 um you really need to start by assuming that you should book a train with the operator itself
31:39 uh that means you'll pay no booking fee it means you'll get the maximum functionality like choosing
31:45 your seat from a seat map and so forth but of course that does mean getting to grips with
31:50 multiple websites so there are several websites that are worth knowing about that will do multiple
31:56 operators and the two most prominent are the trainline.com and raileurope.com because they
32:03 connect to the French, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, German, Austrian and a few others so they allow
32:10 you to book train travel across a huge swathe of Western Europe but even they don't connect to the
32:15 Hungarians or the Bulgarians or the Finns or the Norwegians so you still need to go to the right
32:20 website for the right train. And I'm sure a lot of this we can find at your website but not to do the plug for you. Absolutely.
32:29 Do you have anything specific about accessible travel Mark because we don't actually have any
32:34 information specifically about that. Now I have a page on my site about uh accessible travel uh
32:40 travel with a wheelchair uh to Europe by train it's only basic because I'll be quite honest I'm not
32:46 competent to write about that it needs to be I think that's another website that needs to be written.
32:52 Yep absolutely. Someone has also asked about traveling with pets and Roxanna Albeck has asked
33:01 how can I travel with my dog in an ethical way is there a way to travel um that we can add to nature
33:06 rather than take away from it. Well let's get the first thing out the way straight away uh Eurostar
33:12 doesn't take dogs uh it takes guide dogs obviously if you could dress your dog up and pretend to be
33:17 blind that would be very easy he'd have to be a really good actor if he was a Yorkshire Terrier
33:22 but um there are alternatives the Harwich Hook Ferry allows foot passengers to take dogs it's
33:28 got a railway station right at the ferry terminal Harwich with trains from London Liverpool Street
33:33 it's got a metro station right at the ferry terminal Hook Van Holland with metros into
33:37 Rotterdam for direct sleeper trains to Prague and Berlin trains to Amsterdam wherever so that is a
33:43 really good route to take your dog as a foot passenger. Okay there's also I'm just gonna
33:50 jump in because I commissioned a feature about this um last year or the year before there is a
33:55 fairly new service called I think it's called Le Pet Express I had the name earlier um and it's
34:04 basically yeah if you're traveling with the dog uh yeah it's Le Pet Express so it means you get
34:11 picked up by a minibus um in Ashford and then driven um kind of through the Bureau Tunnel to
34:18 Calais so uh and they also run it through there's a probably talk more about companies that offer
34:24 things later but there's a flight free travel company that offers packages called Byway and
34:29 they've also partnered with Le Pet Express so that is another option that's fairly new if you want to
34:35 be in France. I think we should all celebrate the name. Yeah take a moment to appreciate that
34:42 everybody. That's great um there was a question this was one we were discussing before the call
34:49 about travel insurance when it comes to um slow travel and this one came from Liz McLean
34:55 who asked about booking insurance that goes with outbound journeys but was difficult for
35:02 booking with returns um I'm not expressing this incredibly well but Mark I wonder if you could
35:07 take on maybe you know covering having insurance cover you know multiple rail journeys and and slow
35:13 travel like that. Well I have to say I'm not an expert on travel insurance what I do know is that
35:20 travel insurers don't always understand surface travel that's absolutely true and you won't find
35:26 or at least I haven't found a travel insurer that will bail you out of every misconnection across
35:31 Europe. Some of them have clauses that only protect the first outbound leg from the UK which of course
35:39 means only Paris or Brussels if we're catching Eurostar out so it it it is an issue but we do
35:44 need travel insurance I just book it for the period that I'm going away we need it for the
35:50 health insurance and so forth but you can of course book a Eurostar back to the UK if you feel that
35:58 that somehow makes it a round trip because there are I do know there is this thing about it has to
36:03 be an out and back to the UK by all means book your return Eurostar as a backstop you can now
36:10 change every Eurostar ticket if you need to. Yeah I'd also just leap in and say because I remember
36:16 this question specifically being about you needing to know exactly when you're coming back etc.
36:22 I've always just bought an annual travel insurance policy. I suppose it depends how often you travel
36:28 but it's not that much more often than just doing a single policy and you can kind of make selections
36:34 about do I want it to just cover Europe do I want Europe and the US you can kind of be quite forensic
36:39 about where you're going to be whether you're going to be doing something more dangerous like
36:43 skiing you can add all that on and it just means you then you you never have to report
36:48 when exactly you're going where exactly you're going you're just covered for the year as long
36:52 as you're saying the infected parameters so that might be one way around it.
36:56 And the the next question sort of is zooming out a little bit and you know we talked about how
37:05 the travel industry you know flying is budget and it's sort of the what is promoted but what can the
37:11 UK government and this is a question that comes from John Carr what does what can the UK government
37:15 and governments more generally do to encourage slow travel and you know and this is for me is
37:19 it even in their interest to do that? Shall I take that one first? First thing we need to tax
37:27 aviation fuel so I don't know if everybody knows but there's no tax on kerosene jet fuel which is
37:34 very frustrating when you compare it to other modes of transport especially driving that's taxed
37:39 quite heavily the fuel and it does it's one of the reasons why budget airlines can operate on
37:44 such low fares if we were to tax that fuel we could perhaps use the revenue to subsidize rail
37:51 travel you know the priorities seem to be upside down I don't hold out much hope of our politicians
37:57 enacting these kinds of policies all parties seem to well especially the Tories sorry seem to hate
38:04 public transport we've run several petitions about making low carbon transport a priority
38:13 and the response is always don't worry we're dealing with aviation emissions through our jet
38:18 zero policy and it's all about new technology and so-called sustainable aviation fuel and offsetting
38:24 and there is they're they're very open about the fact they don't want to reduce the amount people
38:29 fly if we had a change of government I don't know if that would be different but I am not sure
38:37 it's kind of you know the aviation industry is a powerful lobby and it's often not politically
38:44 pertinent for our leaders to say we want to limit the amount people fly but yeah so
38:50 and hand in hand with that goes the incentives for for low carbon travel don't quite seem to be there
38:57 and one of the things that we then therefore encourage people to do at Flight for UK is just
39:02 use our consumer power so one of the ways we can put pressure on politicians is to say I'm not going
39:09 to buy that air ticket I am going to buy a slow travel ticket coach train whatever ferry whatever
39:15 it is and if enough of us put our money behind that we can demonstrate with our consumer choices
39:22 that's what we want and then that's where the investment will go simple what we've seen with
39:30 it also mentioned other governments I mean it's not being I don't think it's been implemented
39:35 particularly powerfully but we have seen from countries like France these introductions
39:41 technically of legislation that says right if you can get between these two places domestically
39:47 in under a certain number of hours by rail we're going to cut those domestic flight routes and that
39:53 kind of thing if it's actually properly seen through and enforced is very powerful because
39:59 there's a big problem we have when people are flying from London to Edinburgh because it's
40:06 much cheaper than getting the train I mean that's ludicrous and we've got lots of routes like that
40:10 where there is absolutely no incentive to go the low carbon route because it's two times the cost
40:17 three times the cost of flying even though it would technically be possibly quicker because
40:22 we've already talked about getting to the airport and then you have fun hanging around checking in
40:27 and getting out so you know measures like that could make a big difference but as Anna said that
40:32 there's just not at the moment really the political will there because they see I think they
40:38 see anything against flying as some kind of vote killer and I'm not sure if that's even realistic
40:43 but it's I think on both sides of the fence people have taken that on board like if we tell people
40:48 we're attacking their holidays that's going to be it we're over so we're just going to double down
40:52 and go the other way with it there is there is just one other issue a bit like the aviation fuel
40:59 and that's VAT now not in the UK because there's no VAT on train tickets in the UK but if you go to
41:05 a place like Germany or Austria there's VAT on train tickets not on air tickets so if you fly
41:12 from Berlin to Vienna there's no VAT on your air tickets if you take a train for exactly the same
41:17 journey you pay VAT on top they have reduced the level of VAT for train travel but they haven't
41:23 eliminated it and I think that needs to happen in Europe as well. Is there more we can do to
41:29 encourage I mean there's a lot of news in the UK about train strikes about delays about people
41:34 being stranded and you know is there more we can do to convince people that these are reliable
41:39 services you know? Oh that's very difficult all right it's true it's really tricky when
41:49 yeah there are lots of it feels like there are more strikes on the railways than there are in
41:54 in the air but you I mean it's it's a bit schadenfreude isn't it to say oh well just
41:59 you know some people have to sleep in the airport the other week you know you sort of want to point
42:04 to the disasters that happen with air travel as well but that's not really that helpful but
42:08 um yeah I think we have to acknowledge that actually travel is a nightmare
42:12 sorry to everyone attending this event um but yeah uh it's all travel is difficult but um I don't
42:21 know Mark you probably have a much more profound response to this being a railway man. Well um
42:27 Gould, it's yes I have spent a career being told that the rail fare from A to B is more expensive
42:36 than the fare to New York in fact I'm more familiar with fares to New York airfares to
42:41 New York as a result of this and can normally reply that if you rock up at the airport it's
42:45 four thousand pounds return in economy which people don't know but yes there is a media issue
42:52 where they're always trying to highlight the most expensive rail fare and the cheapest airfare it
42:58 should be the other way around shouldn't it? Yeah I think Helen and I would agree with that one.
43:04 It's true we love a good story but I think what is difficult at the moment is when you're saying
43:11 that I mean part of me is like it's a bit hard to argue with not even on the price front but
43:17 reliability front it does feel like quite a bad period and not just in terms of strikes but
43:23 depending on who your operator is that you rely on you know I had a friend who was you know had
43:28 to rely on Avanti West Coast for a long time and they're like there's just it's 50/50 every time
43:34 whether this I'm going to get there I'm just throwing the dice and so that is tricky because
43:40 there also does need to be a robust service that people feel confident in if you want to convince
43:47 more people to commit to public transport and to stop driving everywhere for example you need to
43:52 have a public transport system that's really fit for purpose and unfortunately I think for a long
43:57 time it was neglected in favour of you know the aviation lobby was very strong but so was the
44:02 motoring lobby and saying everything needs to be about motorways and cars and making it easier to
44:07 drive your car and not about what about we have this amazing system where all of the bus networks
44:13 linked to train networks and and people would prefer to do that if they knew it would operate
44:19 on time and they'd get to where they needed to go of course they would because not everyone wants
44:24 to hop in a car all the time would it? Yeah agreed agreed and I'd like to take it back to another
44:30 this one is a little bit more specific but it's come up from a few people as well and this is
44:34 about cycling and paying for taking a bike on the Eurostar you know any ideas if that's going to
44:42 change that this person who's just identified himself with a number says it costs 45 pounds
44:49 to take your bike on the Eurostar and then there's another question here how do we create a ride off
44:54 or ride on ride off cycle service on Eurostar? I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that?
44:59 Yeah I guess as the resident cyclist I should probably answer that one. I took my bike on
45:06 Eurostar before Covid so I know things are different now but yeah it's similar to the rail
45:13 pricing it's more it's cheaper the more in advance you book so at that time Eurostar allowed a number
45:20 a small number of fully assembled bikes to go to be taken on the train and yeah I was there at the
45:29 same time as someone who didn't book in advance and rolled up and she was just like nearly crying
45:34 at how much it was going to cost her but yeah it's cheaper the more in advance you book however
45:38 I don't know the current policy for taking bikes I don't think they allow it still
45:44 but since Covid I do know that Flixbus is a great option for taking your bike across the channel
45:50 they have not all of them so you'd have to check this but a lot of the coaches have bike racks on
45:58 the back which just blows my mind so it's cheap it's a great way to transport your bike it's so
46:07 much less of a faff with Eurostar taking your bike you have to be there extra extra in advance
46:13 and the drop-off point is a long way from the Eurostar itself and the collection point is a
46:19 long way from the terminal itself and you're waiting around again to collect it whereas
46:24 with the Flixbus it's there you've got it you know so I'd kind of ditch the whole Eurostar
46:30 experience if I'm honest I also much prefer to take the ferry with my bike which you can do on
46:38 DFDS you can't do it on all lines but yeah I mean Dover to Calais is a bit of a nightmare because
46:45 the train station is quite far from the port in both of those locations but hey you've got a bike
46:50 you can ride it so you know that's that's how I would recommend crossing the channel with a bike
46:55 either with Flixbus or on DFDS from Dover to Calais. Great tip. Mark do you have any thoughts
47:02 on on bikes and Eurostar? Well I was going to mention the ferries but I was also going to say
47:07 Harwich Hook the station's right next to that ferry on both sides of the water it's actually
47:12 one of the best routes to take certainly if you're heading to central Europe or eastern Europe but
47:20 actually there's even a train south towards Brussels and Paris so it's not a bad option even
47:26 for that. And actually that ferry has bike racks on it I mean no surprises for a Dutch ferry but
47:33 yeah often on a on a ferry you're kind of you're shoved to the side and you're not really treated
47:38 very well as a cyclist but yes on the on the Harwich to Hook that does have good facilities.
47:44 Great and there's a good question here about plane free package tours that came from
47:52 Dr Andrew Bleben and you know first of all is the market supplying enough of these you know for those
47:57 of us who want to have maybe an easy life and not lots of booking and you know how can we
48:04 encourage more of these these plane free package tours? Well I have to say being ex-travellers
48:11 there have sprung up so many more options and some of them from very mainstream companies
48:17 nothing to do with that before in the last kind of three years even three four years so you know
48:25 it can always be better but I think we have to applaud the fact that there's clearly demand there
48:30 because we've got way more than we have. So I mentioned already Byway that actually started
48:36 during the pandemic and it's only flight free trips it's been a real success story they seem
48:42 to be doing really well they're partnering with bigger companies then there are companies like
48:47 Responsible Travel they've got a whole flight free section, Original Travel have a flight free
48:54 section, Much Better Adventures have a flight free section, there's No Fly Travel Club there's you
49:01 know there are quite a lot of and often it's companies who would have specialised previously
49:06 and still do in in the idea of sustainable travel anyway so they really care about their trips about
49:13 the environment about people putting back but they've often now got you know even if all of
49:19 their packages aren't like free they will have an arm that specialises in that and it's really I
49:25 mean you like anything you will probably end up paying more than if you took responsibility and
49:31 you individually went through and found the perfect dates blah blah but what it is really good for
49:36 is like you say it's quite a hassle often to to find the right trains and to figure out what you're
49:42 doing and if what you really want is to have this amazing flight free holiday but you really don't
49:48 like the logistics and planning and being like oh then you can hand it over to someone and pay a
49:53 little bit more but for that really relaxed experience and actually in the case of certainly
49:59 Byway they've got like this service where if anything goes wrong you can just kind of message
50:03 them straight away and be like our train was late we missed the connection what do we do
50:07 and you've got the benefit of someone being like you just calm down let me take care of that for
50:12 you which is quite appealing for someone else that's what I need that's exactly what I need
50:17 um did you do any in Mark and Anna do you have any other suggestions and well Helen's absolutely
50:25 right the the number of companies offering train travel has increased not as much as I think it
50:31 should of course but there are lots of train specialists out there like TaylorMade Rail
50:35 Railbookers, Byway and I think it's quite good to go to a specialist because they know the ropes
50:41 when it comes to booking trains and it's no good trying to compare it to the individual
50:46 cost of the tickets you're buying a package they're taking all the hassle out of it they're
50:50 taking the responsibility it's it's it's like choosing to buy a dish at a restaurant rather
50:56 than trying to shop for all the ingredients at a supermarket that's the way to think of it
51:04 Great um so I guess we're down to the last few minutes um of the of the panel and just the last
51:11 question for you all if someone is attending this panel and you know hasn't tried slow travel
51:16 and before and they want to dip their toes into it do you have any suggestions of the
51:20 what would be a good first trip um for for someone to try
51:24 Well let's let's go to Switzerland I mean you can't beat Switzerland for scenery and it's dead
51:30 easy you just take Eurostar to Paris uh have a lovely lunch perhaps at the Trambleau restaurant
51:35 at the Gare de Lyon right next to the concourse where your train leaves from then hop on a high
51:40 speed train Geneva is just three hours 20 minutes away Zurich is four hours um head south through
51:47 the Alps on the Benina route that route really takes your breath away and then just come back
51:52 a similar way very straightforward
51:54 I would I would say if you're a complete beginner go for something where you don't need to do any
52:09 changing so something like I mean so Eurostar goes direct to Amsterdam Brussels Lille Paris
52:18 that's four choices of really brilliant destinations um if you go to Amsterdam you have
52:24 to change on the way back but by that time you'll have done one journey so you'll know what you're
52:28 doing but yeah I just just doing it is the most difficult step I think but once you've done it
52:34 once you're like oh right that's how you do it that wasn't difficult at all or these were
52:39 the bits that I can iron out for the next time and then the next time you could maybe do a change in
52:45 whichever city it is um it's quite difficult to change in Paris if you if you're doing it for the
52:50 first time in Lille it's absolutely it's so easy like even if you have to change platforms all of
52:56 the concourses are very uh very accessible traveling between platform is super easy so
53:02 yes that would be my advice totally agree with that I started off much later than you two with
53:10 my flight free journey and at the beginning I didn't know what I was doing I mean I still
53:15 probably don't but by the end of it I was getting you know mid-covid with loads of paperwork
53:20 train to Marseille and a ferry to Morocco and going around Morocco by myself so I mean when
53:26 I look back and say oh my gosh like how did I I'm not that kind of person but I think everyone's
53:30 that kind of person once you keep going and build up and get a bit more adventurous each time
53:36 um but if it is your first time yeah I think I'd agree like start smaller keep it more local
53:43 we've already mentioned getting the ferry to the hook of Holland and then how easy it is to get a
53:48 train I would say do that because the overnight ferry is really enjoyable you can have a nice
53:53 dinner on board sleep wake up you're there and then I'd probably go to Rotterdam because I've
53:58 got a really soft spot for Rotterdam I love Amsterdam too but I think Rotterdam's so underrated
54:03 and so cool and it's actually I think nearer from the ferry port going to Amsterdam so just go there
54:11 and like spend a couple of days there and yeah that's a really smooth experience you're not
54:16 worrying too much about language barriers about changes it's very easy very very enjoyable
54:21 I'd just like to emphasize that because this is the it's the reaction I get every time when
54:28 somebody takes the plunge and takes the train is wow it was easy it's it's an eye-opener it's like
54:35 I've opened it's like they've opened a door to a whole new world and once you've done it you want
54:41 more of it that is the reaction and I think we also need to remember that if you if you fly
54:45 from central London to central Amsterdam you've already changed twice had to change twice
54:50 very good point very good point well I'd like to we've got so many other questions that are coming
54:57 in here a lot of them are very very specific so I would like to thank first of all our amazing
55:03 amazing panelists today and for sharing their experiences and their time and thank you for
55:07 everyone who's joined today's discussion and for the great questions for some of these questions
55:11 that are listed here and if you still have one Mark has very kindly promised to do an Ask Me
55:18 Anything with us in the coming weeks and so if you'd like to sign up for that check out or look
55:23 out for the email from the Independent and you can ask him your specific questions there and for
55:29 anyone who missed it a recording will be available on the Independence website from tomorrow and you
55:34 can find more from the Independence climate team and from their travel team and features team
55:38 on our website and via the climate newsletter that will appear in your inbox every Tuesday
55:43 and if you're not signed up you can sign up on the climate page at the website and our next virtual
55:49 event will be with the Independence health correspondent Rebecca Thomas and who will be
55:53 joined by experts to discuss issues plaguing the NHS's mental health services. Thank you so much
55:58 everyone for taking part.