Why go by train – Or, how to stop worrying and enjoy travelling again.

I want to let you into a secret: travelling by train is better than plane travel. It’s less stressful and more interesting, and therefore more enjoyable. Airports are horrible, stressful places, full of people worrying about exceeding limits on liquids or being charged extra because their suitcase is too big. Time spent in an airport or on a plane is a kind of suspended animation: time on a train is time spent actually travelling, not just covering distance. Airports and planes are inherently international: trains are part of the country they’re in. If you want to get to know a country, travel by train.

I discovered all of this almost by accident. It was a combination of this guilt and an increasing fear of flying that led me to start travelling by train. Without the fear, I’d probably have tried to ignore the guilt, without the guilt I’d probably have kept forcing myself onto planes. I’m not ruling out ever getting on a plane again, but for travel within Europe at least, I definitely prefer to(as the title of this blog says) let the train take the strain.

This year (2019), it suddenly felt like I wasn’t completely out of step with the rest of the world. Something seems to be shifting in how we think about the environment and our effect on it. People like the marvellous Greta Thunberg have begun to make people ask themselves questions about how their lifestyles impact the environment, and according to a 2013 study, air travel has the “biggest climate impact per distance travelled.” In Thunberg’s native Sweden, people are beginning to feel ‘flygskam’ which translates as ‘flight shame’.

If you’re suffering from this, but worried that travelling without flying will means you will have to give up on comfort, allow me to convince you otherwise: train travel does not have to mean slumming it, as you will see from the other entries in this blog. You can still travel in style, and  most trains are more comfortable than short-haul planes (especially if those planes are operated by low cost airlines) –  and you don’t have to wear a seatbelt, or worry about baggage handlers losing or destroying your luggage.

For practical advice on how to plan and book a train holiday, see here.