UK to the Alps via Eurostar and TGV - Flight free adventure

Open up your Instagram account or log into Facebook and it won’t take long to see some photos from all around the world. An old colleague in Australia, a lad you went to school with in Prague, a friend at a wedding in Patagonia - travel, for my generation, is almost a right. An experience we are all entitled to, and encouraged to do, see the world, meet different people, experience different culture, go to the beach from The Beach, where sunscreen.
But in the context of the climate emergency, many of us are wondering how we can experience different parts of the world without reliance on high emissions travel. Many of us have given up flying, we see Greta travelling to North America in a boat, with the term Flygskam or flight shame increasingly common.
So, this summer, we wanted to try and get as far as we could with as small an impact as possible. We were heading to the Alps. And doing it all by train.
I think this saved around 400kg in emissions each way. Cost maybe a little more than flying and was maybe a little longer travel time.
This video is basically my holiday snaps, a walk in the alps, a visit to the tour, and all flight free.
What do you reckon? Would you do a train based holiday next year?!

[@edwardpickering9006]

Bravo!

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Thank you!

[@Gazmaz]

Some friends of ours and ourselves went from Market Harborough to Amsterdam via Eurostar for a long weekend and it was fine the only down side was we had a short 5mile car journey to start with, my wife and I have used the train to go on holiday in the UK many times. I used to use the Eurostar often when I worked for a company with a place in Mechelen in Belgium I walked to the station changed at Euston walk to. St Pancras change at Brussels train to Mechelen and walk to the hotel, it took a little longer than getting in the car and driving straight there and roughly the same time as by plane. The issue is the UK’s dreadful train service, compared to Europe ours is awful, and you HAVE to make it easy for people to want to do it. We could all do more but we need the government to take bigger steps for the real difference to be made. Great video and thanks for sharing

[@Lewis_Standing]

Going to try the Ferry from North Shields to Ijmuiden ( Amsterdam ) for our european adventures in the future. Anticipate it being a little easier than herding the kids on a long train journery, but can see why you two would do the train - I would sans the kids too. But has the advantage of taking the EV with us, and I think i'll go visit all the countries with a low carbon grid first. France will be great, Denmark and then Scandinavia. Hoping the Ferry to Stavangar re-opens at some point as Id love to do the artic circle. thanks for sharing tom

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Great stuff. Would be a brill trip. And agree about the Stavangar route. I think my Mum and Sister were on one of the last ones. I’ve not done the Amsterdam ferry yet. Had plans in 2020 to ferry across and ride a bike home… maybe one for the future!!

[@jamiefox54]

Nice trip. We've done as far as Malaga with stops in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Cordoba and I've done business trip in Germany going as far as Munich: Brussels Eurostar is key to Germany. This year I'm doing business trip to Hannover via change in Amsterdam and next year family holiday to Rome via south of France and Italian Riviera. Trains are better than planes anyway.

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

They sound like great trips! Trains should be the 1st choice for most travel in Europe!

[@23danick]

Very interesting video! Since I started calculating my carbon footprint 2 years ago I realized how much flying has a big impact. I have since only travelled by car or public transportation. One thing I have found is quite helpfull to make good choices is to impose on myself a "carbon tax" per ton of CO2 emitted. This way it makes more polluting habits more costly.

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Thanks for the comment, I love that perspective. And a personal carbon tax is a really helpful way of seeing emissions. I think when we actually count our own emissions we can prioritise changes. For us, our heating system was the big chunk of emissions that we could do something about, so we got a heat pump, we don’t fly much, although have family in the states we are visiting in September, so we need to be conscious of those emissions and ‘tax’ ourselves! Where does your carbon tax go? Thanks for engaging! Tom

[@23danick]

It would be an interesting video if you showed how one can calculate their yearly emissions (electricity, transport, food, etc.) by showing your emissions calculations as an exemple @@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle

[@davebarton9301]

I haven't flown for over 5 years and love traveling by train to France and Germany , however it is considerably more expensive than flying and not as fast door to door generally. I would however add that flying only accounts for around 2% of global emissions which is a drop in the ocean, and if we could get all the other bits down then using planes in the future shouldn't be that much of a worry. It's an easy target.

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Hi Dave, I think you’re right travelling by train is more expensive although as soon as you add big bags costs for flights start going up, and usually airports are miles away from where you want to be. On the proportion of emissions - 2% is a drop by it comes from a small proportion of global population… so not many of us need to change (in the grand scheme of things). Ultimately these emissions are frequent fliers not taking notice of their emissions, rather than me or you flying once or twice a year… but every little helps. And every kgCO2 matters!

[@faceuptoclimatekarma]

Nice video, clearly demonstrates the huge carbon difference between ground and air travel. I do wonder how many people consider whether they need the trip or not. 200 years ago the Earths population was around 1 billion and people didn't travel much. Now it's 8 billion, and people go everywhere. I mention this because at this time on Earth, if every single human created greenhouse emission was completely stopped, we would still be in for a rough ride. Sea levels will still rise, weather pattens will change, the ice caps will melt, the temperature will keep rising though slower. Added to this is the fact that there is a tipping point, whereby the positive carbon feedback loops begin to runaway. By feedback loops I mean Ice caps melt, sea warms, melts more, releases CO2 and methane Warm sea doesn’t absorb as much CO2 etc Permafrost holds twice the amount of CO2 as is already in our atmosphere Deforestation, fires etc Might as well throw volcanos, fire and brimstone in there.. I'm not trying to spoil everyone's lives, I just think we need to bring the backdrop into focus. Every day we make decisions which produce varying amounts of emissions, and so having some sense of the extreme exigency of our actual situation as a species might help. The reason we are able to make the decisions we make tomorrow is down to our civilization of which we are part, and which has accrued a debt to the planet. We are each at least an 8 billionth (probably more in the 'developed' world) personally responsible for the problem. If we don't collectively get a sense of this and take action now, we will blindly and blithely walk over the edge.

[@joewentworth7856]

Are your carbon estimates per head or for the both of you?

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Estimates are per head, but only estimates! It’s a tricky thing to do accurately, plane may be flying anyway so what does booking 1-2 ticket(s) add? But also train would be running anyway …. So…. Moving over to a train is positive but do we need 100 of us to do it on the same route before a plane doesn’t fly…?

[@joewentworth7856]

@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle interesting, had not thought about it as you need to get the plane not to fly to make the full saving. i guess lots of what we do are a 'vote' the companies will notice as a trend, even if their direct emissions impact is small at the moment.