My family left our rented villa in southern Spain at 7am this Saturday morning. A few hours later and they are already home. They flew.

I will arrive home two whole days after them IF things go to schedule. Today it’s Malaga-Madrid-Barcelona, youth hostel overnight. Tomorrow is Barcelona-Paris, hotel overnight. Monday is Paris-London-local station.

Some of you will recall the challenges I faced in planning and booking for this journey by train – https://glennlyons.blog/2023/05/31/planning-your-travel-to-avoid-flying-the-twists-turns-and-costs/

I chose not to fly. I’ve done too much of it already in my lifetime and it’s an affront to the climate crisis we now find ourselves in for me to do any more.

Here are some takeaway points from the experience:

Choice set – flying was not in my choice set for this holiday – the ‘cost’ is too high environmentally for me.

Pricey – It has been an expensive undertaking to avoid flying – my travel (and en-route accommodation) costs have totalled over £700 (though I did treat myself to a taxi to the villa). Don’t be fooled into thinking an Interrail pass has all bases covered. My wife’s flight was under a third of this (plus a share of travel to/from airports).

Planning headache – Maybe next time it would feel much easier but quite a headache to work through – see earlier post.

Travel time use – I’ve been productive on the move, using much of my time for work – partly because it’s train not plane but also because my wife has the children!

Experience – the trains themselves have all run on time (so far – currently delayed on way home!) but it’s a long trip and rather tiring (maybe that’s the work!) especially dragging around my luggage (cases with wheels a godsend!). I loved the youth hostel in Barcelona – Room108 – clean, well-organised and nicely communal.

Electronics – Key for me was the consistent availability of charging points on the trains (except in the UK); free Internet access on board trains and at stations was more hit and miss – great through Spain on the way down but poor from Paris to Barcelona (rubbish from London to Paris).

Emotional – Hard on me and on my family to be travelling separately – I know my wife is shouldering a lot for me to avoid flying. Could we have gone by train together? Perhaps – if our pockets were deep enough, if the children (8, 12 and 15) could have coped, if we could have coped!

Location, location, location – OK, we had the Costa Del Sol experience we wanted but of course the choice to holiday in southern Spain has been the main determinant of the amount of travel. Holidaying closer to home would make all the difference in terms of environmental footprint, time and monetary cost.

Car-free holiday – flying aside, we chose a villa near the sea and local residential centre so no car was hired and we enjoyed the freedom of having everything we needed proximate or a bus journey away.

#trainnotplane#climatecrisis