Western europe - do you train it or fly it?

[morrisobrien]

Buy yourself the cheapest Interrail Global Pass,which includes travel to and from St.Pancras.
Take advantage of the Eurostar/Interrail fares....£26.50 or£33.50 each way depending on class.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

Buy yourself the cheapest Interrail Global Pass,which includes travel to and from St.Pancras.
Take advantage of the Eurostar/Interrail fares....£26.50 or£33.50 each way depending on class.

Interesting idea but proves my point about Eurostar being overpriced, as it comes to nearly £300 with the compulsory reservation fees. I could do three return Easyjet flights from Gatwick for that price. Interrail might come into its own if you wanted to travel within Europe after going to Paris, but not otherwise.

 

[bspahh]

Interesting idea but proves my point about Eurostar being overpriced, as it comes to nearly £300 with the compulsory reservation fees. I could do three return Easyjet flights from Gatwick for that price. Interrail might come into its own if you wanted to travel within Europe after going to Paris, but not otherwise.

Country-specific tickets are cheaper than the global ones, and still let you get the €30 Eurostar passholder tickets.

An Interrail ticket for 3 days travel in France within a month is £135
https://www.myinterrail.co.uk/interrail-passes/pass-benefits/belgium/
For Belgium its £96.
https://www.myinterrail.co.uk/interrail-passes/pass-benefits/france/

It is worth costing out the full journey when you compare flights with train journeys. Transfers to and from airports at either end can cost much more than the flights.

 

[bspahh]

Interesting statement from bspahh.
I find that my employer does not understand the train option unless its a very short distance with no flight available.

I work in a satelite office for an american company. The head office gets their travel done by a travel agent, which means they fly everywhere. I'm left to my own devices, so long as I get where I need to be, without spending a stupid amount. They don't mind me on a long slow trip in my time, perhaps not in office hours.

www.rome2rio.com is good for an overview of different options for travel between two places. For trains and ferries, www.seat61.com is good for an overview and useful links to get the Sparpreis tickets from London to Germany. www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml is good for timetables, www.loco2.com for through tickets. I use www.skyscanner.net to search for flights and www.wikivoyage.org for information on the best connections from airports.

 

[Groningen]

Well; if i had known before i had used the Eurostar. Last year i came from Ireland and entered Wales at Fishguard. After 7 o'clock i arrived at London Paddington. Walked to Victoria where i departed shortly after 9.30. Walked to the ferry where i had a long wait. Now i do not exactly the times, but arrived at about 22 to 23 hours in the evening Antwerpen. I could have reached the Netherlands with a delayed crowded Thalys, but went the next day. There is no busconnection between Calais harbour and Calais station; it is at least a walk of 30 minutes.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

Country-specific tickets are cheaper than the global ones, and still let you get the €30 Eurostar passholder tickets.

An Interrail ticket for 3 days travel in France within a month is £135
https://www.myinterrail.co.uk/interrail-passes/pass-benefits/belgium/
For Belgium its £96.
https://www.myinterrail.co.uk/interrail-passes/pass-benefits/france/

It is worth costing out the full journey when you compare flights with train journeys. Transfers to and from airports at either end can cost much more than the flights.

Interesting, but still more expensive for the journey I have in mind - South London to Chalons en Champagne.

I reckon that by air the total cost is typically £156 - £86 EasyJet return+£20 return Paris Airport-Paris Est on the RER; probably an overestimate+£50 return Paris-Chalons. (Home to Gatwick Airport on the train costs about the same as Home to St Pancras, maybe slightly less.
The Interrail pass is actually £155 for an adult under 60 while two standard class Eurotunnel passholder reservations come to about £45 - and there is also a £11 delivery charge for the Interrail pass, making a total of £211.

So the plane still comes out cheaper by quite a margin, unless you are planning to travel more extensively within France.

 

[radamfi]

Often, the only affordable way of crossing the Channel at short notice is by coach. What would be good would be a revival of the Connex coach service that went from Ashford to Calais frequently throughout the day via the Tunnel. Then you can get into Belgium by bus via Dunkerque and De Panne or by local train via Lille.

 

[nw1]

Generally almost all my trips to mainland Europe are holidays and at least a week, often two weeks. My home location is Southampton so not London, but London is easy to get to.

Consequently for places north of the Alps and Pyrenees, and the whole of France, I have used the train, as I enjoy the scenery and the train journey, and fly to places further south and east.

Regularly visited Bavaria and Austria between 2009 and 2014 and used the train every time, also did Nice in one day and returned from Salzburg to Southampton in one day in 2011. Even though Eurostar is expensive, the London-Spezial fares were - at that time, not sure what the situation is now - good value with a return to somewhere like Salzburg still under £200 even without the notably cheap fares (I typically ended up getting something like EUR49 or 59 in one direction, and a higher price such as EUR 119 in the other), which seems good value compared to the price of tickets in the UK.

By contrast, Andalusia and - particularly - Greece, two of the other places I've been to recently, are too far for a train journey without impacting on the time actually at the destination (and Greece would be incredibly convoluted to reach by train, I'd imagine) so I've flown. Other cases where I've flown have been where I've needed to get somewhere very quickly for a short trip of just a couple of days, Southampton to Amsterdam springs to mind.

The novelty of continental rail travel has worn off a bit compared to say 2009 when I did my first big continental rail trip, and the contrast between the UK and the continent (which made rail travel particularly interesting) has lessened a bit in the intervening period due to, for example, more private operators in parts of Germany and withdrawal of some older continental stock - but for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, western Austria and probably northern Italy and northern Spain, I would choose the train assuming it was a week-to-two-week holiday.

 

[scarby]

I love travelling by ship, but some of the fares are prohibitive, particularly if actually using them as transport to go one way (all the deals are on booze cruises) and as someone travelling on their own you also have to pay the highest per person per cabin berth. For example, I was looking at Kiel-Gothenburg in July, and the basic foot passenger price in the summer holiday period is increased to EUR 100. But that isn't the price at all, since a cabin is mandatory. The cheapest, simplest cabin without a window is EUR 95 - so EUR 195 in total.

I believe you get 30% off with a rail pass, but that is only for the basic fare, so still EUR 165 with a rail pass.

 

[edwin_m]

I had a number of trips to Paris a couple of years back and from Nottingham a train to St Pancras then Eurostar worked out about the same time and cost as trains to London City and a flight. The difference was that on the Eurostar I got about two hours more work done, and there was a choice of a journey every hour instead of just a few every day. A flight from East Midlands to Paris might have been quicker but nobody flew that route (and as far as I'm aware they still don't).

I had to visit Madrid around the same time and wondered about going there by train after one of the Paris meetings, but even with high speed lines a lot of the way it woul have taken the best part of a day.

 

[DaiGog]

I am lucky in that I can take advantage of rail staff travel facilities. In my case it's either free, or at worst £14, to get from Yorkshire to London, and 40 Euros each way on Eurostar (60 Euros in First if I'm feeling frivolous).

Until last year, I hated flying. I went on a 'fearless flyer' course with EasyJet, and it has helped me enormously. I don't think I will ever love it, but I'm at least "fine with it" now and have taken a couple of solo flights in the last few months, which I would never have dreamed of doing. I would recommend that anybody who doesn't like flying gets themselves on one of these courses - several airlines do them. They cost a few hundred quid but it's worth it, particularly when comparing flight prices with full fat Eurostar fares.

All of which means I now have a choice between flying and Eurostar. The lower cost of Eurostar at staff rate means it's a viable option compared with the budget airlines, and time-wise can be considerably better living where I do. Consequently I weigh up the two options based on cost and time and go with whatever works out best for the trip in question.

 

[Bald Rick]

I’m fortunate enough to get free first class travel for me and family across much of Europe. And I’m 30 minutes from my front door to St Pancras.

So, obviously, my last 15 trips to France for holidays have been by plane or car (or both). The plane is quicker, and usually cheaper (cheaper than staff rate!) to where I need to get to for when I go on my own (usually somewhere involving mountains), the car has the flexibility to carry the luggage / kids / multiple bikes etc to places remote from the rail network.

However, If I was going to a city centre somewhere on the TGV / ICE network 2-3 hours from Paris / Brussels, and without the kids, I would probably go Eurostar.

 

[deltic]

Based in London so travel by train to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin - all have been cheaper than flying except Berlin but then saved a night in a hotel and had the benefit of a half day in Paris each way. Train arrives at St Pancras and I can be home in 30 mins - plane touches down at Heathrow and it can easily be 2hrs before I get home - record is waiting an hour for a suitcase to arrive on one of the few times I didn't just travel with hand luggage

 

[fowler9]

I get the green argument but for long distances modern high bypass ratio turbofans are very economical fuel wise per head carried. Car ferries and ships in general are pretty big polluters. Getting a train from Liverpool to Amsterdam or many places on the mainland would make little financial or time sense. I would question how much greener it would be also.

 

[bunnahabhain]

I've never flown, I'm currently in Prague, out via Berlin, return via Nuremburg. I've previously been to Palermo (out via Marseille, Grenobles, Milan, Rome and return via Genova, Zurich, Mulhouse and Troyes). I'm quite happy taking the train in Europe as opposed to short haul flights. But countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia are getting on for the limit.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I'm having my interrail years now, about 55 years after everybody else.
I do 2 short continental train trips a year, spring and autumn, aiming to increase my footprint to as many European countries as possible, sampling their trains and general touristy, cultural things.
I like my routes to connect up into a continuous network to/from the UK, even if rather indirect.
Starting from Manchester (sometimes Liverpool) I fly to where I left off the time before, do a 3-4-day tour usually across national borders, and fly back from the destination. Day trains only, overnight hotels near stations.
Eurostar is out of the question, as it doesn't get you far enough on day 1 to be useful, and the hotels are the most expensive bit of the trip.

When living in the Thames Valley I used Eurostar/TGV a number of times on family holidays (eg Annecy, Bordeaux, St Raphael) as well as Paris and Brussels, so I know how it works.
In the past I have also used ferries (Harwich-Hoek, Le Havre-Portsmouth) and the Dover routes, but they are just too slow these days.
It's also incredibly cheap to book an LCC 6-9 months ahead - eg Manchester-Munich and back from Sofia for £60, going Munich-Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia by train between the flights.
I've had a couple of flight cancellations in 12 trips (BMI, Flybe) which luckily did not affect the rail part of the trip, otherwise no logistics problems.
So far I can trace several long rail routes across Europe eg Malaga-Paris-Hamburg-Tallinn (OK includes 2 ferries!), and Wick-Strasbourg-Milan-Naples-Siracusa, just not all in one go.
I'm hoping to reach the Aegean, Black Sea and Africa (Morocco) before I'm done.

There's too much culture and scenery in Europe to spend it in the northern Eurostar flatlands, or travelling overnight (you don't see much of a country in a sleeper).
At the overnights I usually get a 24-hour transport ticket and explore the local metro system, while seeing some of the sights.
I also once had an unplanned visit to a Budapest military hospital, but best not go into that!
I also try and visit the opera or a concert on my trips, and so far I've managed Mozart in Berlin, Verdi in Naples, Wagner in Estonia and Dvořak in Hungary, all excellent experiences.
I can also tell you how user-friendly foreign rail web sites and ticketing systems are, and what the best deals for seniors are (or were when I passed through)!
I use "Saver" fares locally, buying e-tickets well in advance from the national TOC.
It's never worth buying passes of any description, they are poor value these days.
Nor do I use the UK-based ticketing sites, where you frequently can't get the best fare.
Part of the fun is fathoming the best deal on an inadequate English translation of a local web site.

I just hope the ease with which we can cross borders today is not lost with all the security and immigration fandango that is growing every year.
Not to mention leaving the EU and its citizen travel benefits.

 

[ge-gn]

I had to visit Madrid around the same time and wondered about going there by train after one of the Paris meetings, but even with high speed lines a lot of the way it woul have taken the best part of a day.

Did this about 5 years ago from London using the trenhotel overnight sleeper Paris to Madrid. About 15 hours end to end, at least half of which was spent sleeping.

That was before trenhotel was culled. Progress dictates that it now takes about twelve tedious daytime hours including an extra change.

 

[edwin_m]

I get the green argument but for long distances modern high bypass ratio turbofans are very economical fuel wise per head carried. Car ferries and ships in general are pretty big polluters. Getting a train from Liverpool to Amsterdam or many places on the mainland would make little financial or time sense. I would question how much greener it would be also.

I've just quoted on another thread that our online travel booker shows Edinburgh to Bristol is 33kg CO2 by train and at least five times that by plane even at the high seating density of EasyJet. Many European journeys are a similar length but the train option would probably careate less CO2 due to a higher likelihood of the train being electric and of using renewable/nuclear energy (does Eurostar still claim to be carbon neutral on these grounds?).

 

[Dougal2345]

I've just quoted on another thread that our online travel booker shows Edinburgh to Bristol is 33kg CO2 by train and at least five times that by plane even at the high seating density of EasyJet. Many European journeys are a similar length but the train option would probably careate less CO2 due to a higher likelihood of the train being electric and of using renewable/nuclear energy (does Eurostar still claim to be carbon neutral on these grounds?).

And of course it's not just CO2 (in case anyone is about to say they're not too worried about that) - it's NOx, all sorts of nasty particulates, and noise pollution too...

 

[atillathehunn]

I go fairly regularly (probably once every 2 months) to Northern England from NL and to London about 3 times per year. London I flew twice for the novelty factor (our airport is a tin shed, and for one flight it was a flying garden shed to Southend airport). All other times I drive or train. I took the bus once and never, ever again.

For Northern England it's about 70% flying. Since Manchester airport became the deeply unpleasant experience it has been the past few times I've been through, E* becomes more attractive though when I was a student it was easier with lectures to balance, rather than a boss. Since I don't live in a city served by a proper airport, I have to take a train from the airport to my city (up to 2.45 hours depending on the airport), whereas from Brussels Midi it's actually quite convenient so it's the faff of getting from near Manchester to London that's the issue.

 

[Spamcan81]

Previous European trips have been by plane but this year we are taking the train to Germany for the Trier Dampfspektakel. Price was very competitive once luggage charges and the cost of getting to the airport and parking were added to the “cheap” flights.

 

[cactustwirly]

It depends on where you're going, If you're going further than Belgium/France then flying is probably the best option.
When I've been to Brittany in France, I've usually got a ferry from Pompey(to either St Malo or Ouistreham) as this is the most convenient option (but not exactly the cheapest)

 

[fowler9]

I've just quoted on another thread that our online travel booker shows Edinburgh to Bristol is 33kg CO2 by train and at least five times that by plane even at the high seating density of EasyJet. Many European journeys are a similar length but the train option would probably careate less CO2 due to a higher likelihood of the train being electric and of using renewable/nuclear energy (does Eurostar still claim to be carbon neutral on these grounds?).

Fair play but Liverpool to Amsterdam is different from Edinburgh to Bristol. Do Easyjet have many full flights from Edinburgh to Bristol? Isn't there a direct Edinburgh to Bristol train?

 

[Bald Rick]

Fair play but Liverpool to Amsterdam is different from Edinburgh to Bristol. Do Easyjet have many full flights from Edinburgh to Bristol? Isn't there a direct Edinburgh to Bristol train?

EZY fly 3-4 times daily each way (except Saturdays). Load factors are never published by route, but EasyJet as a whole got over 93% of their seats filled for the 12 months to 31/3/18. Given that all bar one of tomorrow’s flights are full, I’d say it’s reasonable to assume load factors on this route are pretty decent. The fares are cheaper (you can go on Thursday for under £90 return), and even allowing for security, terminal time and getting to/from the airport it’s about 2hours quicker than CrossCountry.

 

[paolo]

Did three Berlin trips last year.

First two were city breaks, I flew. I guess it helped that both were Tegel, a crazily easy airport, 15 minutes in a cab to our city accommodation.

Third was the first leg on a full rail tour. That was 11 hours London to Berlin, and was a bit - argh - towards the end. I think for journeys <6 hours by train, I'd do that every time. That's around my tipping point.

 

[Dougal2345]

FWIW, I flew for the last time in 2003 (my first and only Ryanair experience).

At the risk of boring people with the equivalent of showing my holiday snaps, here are my no-fly foreign holidays since 2002, which, if anyone reading this hasn't really thought about it, might give some idea of what's possible with daytime train travel only (exceptions noted in brackets). The cities named are places where I stayed for one or more nights (except for London).

2002 London-Luzern-London
2003 London-Brussels-Berlin-Warsaw-Prague-Vienna-Paris-London
2004 London-Cologne-Dresden-Munich-Dusseldorf-London
2005 London-Rotterdam (train-ferry-train)-London (train-ferry-train)
2006 London-Turin-Rome-Prato-Turin-London
2007 London-Namur-Luxembourg-London
2008 London-Hamburg-Stockholm-Tallinn (ferry o/n)-Riga (coach)-Vilnius (coach)-Warsaw-Berlin-London
2010 London-Cannes-London
2011 London-Munich-Zagreb-Sarajevo-Belgrade-Budapest-Nuremberg-London
2012 London-Barcelona-Madrid-Lisbon (coach)-Salamanca (train-coach)-Bilbao-London
2012 London-Strasbourg-London
2013 London-Belfast (train-ferry-train)-Dublin-London (ferry-train)
2013 London-Berlin-Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow-St Petersburg-Tallinn-Stockholm (ferry o/n)-Hamburg-London
2014 London-Biel-London
2014 London-Stockholm (ferry o/n Harwich-Esbjerg)-Oslo-Åndalsnes-Gothenburg-Malmo-London (ferry o/n Esbjerg-Harwich)
2015 London-Milan-Athens (train-ferry o/n-train)-Thessaloniki-Sofia-Bucharest-Budapest-Nuremberg-London
2015 London-Lyon-Barcelona-London
2016 London-Barcelona-Gibraltar-Barcelona-London
2016 London-Salzburg-Bratislava-Krakow-Prague-London (coach-train)
2017 London-Leipzig-Prague-Ljubljana-Innsbruck-London
2017 London-Barcelona-Valencia-Palma de Mallorca (ferry)-Barcelona (ferry)-London
2017 London-Toulouse-Barcelona-Marseille-London

I live a couple of hours from London, so all these were topped and tailed with a train from and to the south coast.

 

[MarcVD]

Gibraltar by train ?

I did that kind of trip too, but also longer distances : Marrakech, Beijing, Tehran, Tashkent.

 

[Dougal2345]

Gibraltar by train ?

Forgot about the coach from Algeciras! Actually to be strictly accurate I stayed in La Linea, not Gibraltar, as it was cheaper...

Oh and although I'd booked the train from Oslo to Andalsnes, and had my ticket printed out, when I turned up at Oslo station, it turned out my booking was impossible as there was no such train that day. The very helpful lady put me on a train/bus to Lillehammer and gave me a taxi coupon for the rest of the trip. That was a very long taxi journey and IIRC the fare on the meter was around £600...

 

[96tommy]

I live around 20-30 minutes on the tube from St Pancras but the high Eurostar ticket prices mean 80% of the time I travel by plane. The only 2 times I have used the Eurostar was for a 3 night trip to Paris and another time when I went to Lake Garda (Eurostar to Paris, TGV to Milan then Trenitalia to Desenzano)

 

[duesselmartin]

Gibraltar by train ?

I did that kind of trip too, but also longer distances : Marrakech, Beijing, Tehran, Tashkent.

No more ferry from Algeciras?
Done it by coach from Marbella some years ago.