3
Now that I’d got a taste of my first sleeper trains in the UK, I felt emboldened to flex my travel skills further afield, transporting them across the Channel and onto the Continent. But, still a long way off being able to call myself an experienced terrestrial traveller, I wanted to check in with the experts first – those flight-free grand masters whose wisdom would become the pillars of my new slow-travel ‘lifestyle’. How had these people been not sleeping on night trains for decades without having a nervous breakdown? And had they ever perfected the art of vomiting elegantly on a turbulent sea crossing? There was only one way to find out.
I meet Mark Smith at London St Pancras – ranked the world’s best station in 2020 – which is as fitting a place as any to quiz the UK’s most prominent rail expert.1 I feel a little giddy, as if I’m meeting an A-list celebrity. You may never have heard of Mark; and, to be fair, until my flight-free journey began, I had only come across him in passing. But now … now he is my guru, my guide, the Yoda to my Skywalker. The man who can tell you how to get from Tirana to Tashkent by train without breaking a sweat.
When I first asked for tips on giving up flying on social media, one name came up again and again.
‘The Man in Seat 61,’ people would say in hushed, reverential tones. (I mean, I couldn’t hear them as they were replying on Twitter, obviously. But let’s go ahead and assume they were hushed and reverential.)
‘He will be everything you need. He will be your guiding light. Your moon and stars. Your gateway to another world.’ (They may not have been quite this poetic.)
I started to hear his name so much I wondered if he was paying some of these people. And then I went onto his website, and everything started to make sense.
If you are planning any international trip by train and haven’t done so already, go to seat61.com. IMMEDIATELY. I insist. It is a thing of pure wonder. Not only will it tell you how to get between pretty much any two places by train, but it will also let you know the timetables, the prices, how to book it and, crucially, give you exquisite extras like, ‘I recommend lunching in this little place in Barcelona just down the road from the station before continuing on your journey. The croquettas are particularly good.’
Mark’s absolute adoration of travel comes across in these little tips – they conjure up the excitement of the journey in a way that is the polar opposite to buying plane tickets in under a minute on some soulless price comparison aggregator.
‘I love travel, and trains and ships are real travel, romantic travel, where the journey matters, where you see where you’re going,’ Mark tells me over coffee to an exhilarating sonic backdrop of train horns and Eurostar announcements, evoking the anticipation of a hundred journeys all about to begin. ‘Airlines sort of suck the joy out of travel. But trains and ships are civilised and humane. You sleep in a bed; you eat in a restaurant; there are no seatbelts; and you can stand up and walk around. It takes you from the city centre to the city centre. It shows you the countryside – countryside that hasn’t been destroyed by virtue of the motorway you are travelling on tearing through it.
‘The journey can be as fun – and sometimes more fun – than the destination.’
And I can see it, as he says all this and his eyes light up – I can see the excitement of it all. I catch a glimpse of an idea that is, as he says, romantic: me, impeccably dressed while lounging in a train dining car somewhere, glass of the palest rosé in hand as lush greenery whizzes by the windows. Perhaps there’s a debonair stranger with a whisper of sadness in his eyes who strikes up a conversation in the bar car later and he … Ahem. Sorry. Lost focus there for a moment.
But, for all that, it’s not always easy to do. Not the pulling a stranger on a train bit – the actual booking of the train bit. Yes, you can put a journey into the likes of the Trainline app and it might come up with something. But, equally, it might not. Because Trainline isn’t a person; it uses data and algorithms, but not always logic.
‘If you want to go from London to Florence, and let’s assume you want the day train, not the night train, you can’t just type London–Florence into a journey planner because you need an overnight stop,’ says Mark, with the kind of gusto that comes from talking about your very favourite subject:
Instead of the journey planner coming up with an answer for you, you have to tell the journey planner exactly what you want; you have to know in advance how to do it. A very simple example is, if you want to go from Paris to Moscow, there’s one train a week and it leaves on Thursday night. You have to know that it leaves on Thursday night before you open the journey planner, because if you look at Wednesday and Tuesday and Sunday, you’re not going to find it.
That suggests you need something that actually explains it all, rather than just a journey planner where you can put in anywhere to anywhere. Of course, I can’t explain everywhere to everywhere, but hey, if I explain most places to most places … I’m always trying to fill the gaps.
That was the motivation for Mark to set up his site, way back in 2001. He spotted a gap in the market – one that, rather incredibly, still hasn’t really been filled by anyone else. There is still no one to rival his knowledge, skills, meticulous research and unquenchable passion for breaking down train journeys. And, let me tell you, they need breaking down. Booking long-distance train travel is the furthest of cries from typing a destination into Skyscanner. Of course, from one perspective, that’s all part of the fun. Mark continues:
Booking flights is easy. Nightmare to do and it doesn’t give you anything back when you actually do it. Booking trains is hard – it’s a challenge. But when you actually do it and make the journey, it’s wonderful. And it’s like everything else in life: if you put more effort in, you get a lot more out.
It definitely needs some actual thought, rather than three clicks and you’re done. A journey planner, for instance, might put together your itinerary of trains without knowing that there’s quite a lengthy platform change at such-and-such connecting station, or that you need to add in more of a time buffer at X interchange because one of the trains is often tardy. The buffer is important because, unlike with flights, consumers have very few rights when it comes to connecting trains. If you miss one, you’re pretty much on your own – the train company doesn’t care why you missed it. The previous train company whose service was late, which is why you missed your next train, also doesn’t care. No one is compelled to take responsibility; if you’re stranded, no one has a duty of care towards you.
It’s one of the issues Mark Smith is most fervid about, in fact – that there should be parity between EU air passenger rights, which are comprehensive and protect the consumer, and train traveller rights, which are a different kettle of fish altogether. Under EU regulation 261/2004, if your flight is cancelled at the last minute, you will, at the very least, be entitled to food, drink and accommodation paid for by the airline, plus they are duty-bound to get you to your destination as soon as possible – even if that means booking you a ticket on another airline. (For those of us in post-Brexit Britain, these consumer protections remain identical.) If the flight was cancelled due to a fault of the airline (rather than circumstances outside their control), passengers are also entitled to compensation ranging from €125 to €600, depending on the length of the journey.
Train companies have no such responsibilities. Your train was cancelled and you’re stuck somewhere overnight? Sucks to be you. ‘Europe needs to address passenger rights for a world where there are no through-tickets,’ says Mark:
When I worked for a train company in the university holidays, I would issue through-tickets in biro on blank ticket stock, from London to Istanbul, London to Rome, London to Barcelona, London to Lisbon. That was very Old World; it doesn’t exist now. Everything’s computerised and yield managed and dynamically priced, controlled in a different ticketing system for each operator, and through-tickets are rapidly becoming the exception, not the norm. And technically, your connectional protection, same as with air travel, doesn’t exist when you buy separate tickets, or even where separate tickets get added together by Raileurope or Trainline.
Mark champions reform in this area, and has even spoken as part of the transport committee at the European Parliament in Brussels on the subject. The parliament passed provision for better protections a couple of years ago, but Mark thinks the council is ‘likely to reject that decision’.
Although the EU would say they’re trying to create a level playing field between train travel and air travel, their focus is on the wrong issues, according to him:
They’re obsessed with delay compensation. They haven’t realised that people are making through-journeys on multiple tickets because they have to. And the biggest issue is not getting back 20 per cent of your €29 ticket, it’s what happens when you miss that €29 train because the preceding train is late, and they want you to buy a €130 full-flex ticket to get you to your destination. That’s a much bigger issue.
Fierce lobbying from train companies, who are vehemently against enhanced regulation, is part of the problem – even though greater protection might be in their best interests commercially. ‘I think it would stop bad publicity and it would stop people being afraid,’ says Mark. ‘Once you’ve had a bad experience where you’ve missed a train and paid through the nose, you’ll be afraid to do it again.’
So yes, there are pitfalls; many more than with flying. But Mark would say it’s definitely worth it, and maybe I would too once I’ve found that glass of rosé and the handsome stranger. Here are his best tips for staying grounded.
Go direct (or don’t)
‘There isn’t one website that does everything, so don’t believe anyone who tells you their website sells all European train tickets,’ says Mark. For example, the only place you’ll get Prague–Budapest tickets for €20 with print-at-home delivery is the Czech Railways website – nobody else connects to them. Sites like trainline.com and raileurope.co.uk connect to France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria and the UK. They’re easy to use but charge a fee – if you want to avoid that, go straight to the operator to book instead.
But, equally, sometimes it’s worth the extra money, according to Mark:
Some of the operators are a bit quirky, [Spanish rail company] Renfe being an obvious one. By ‘quirky’, I mean not always user friendly: switching back into odd bits of Spanish when you’ve changed it to English. So even if you’re booking a Madrid–Lisbon sleeper in English, you need to know the difference between a Turista and a Cama-Turista and, if you don’t, you’ll end up in a seat all night.
Which is why it’s sometimes worth paying the booking fee: because at least then it’s in plain English and you can book several trains together all in one place.
Don’t rely on the connection time
People in the know talk a lot about ‘padding your connections’. It means including generous pockets of time between trains so that, if one is late, it doesn’t have a knock-on effect and ensure you miss every other train on your journey. Mark advises:
Use some risk management. Booking engines don’t do risk management; they apply the same theoretical ten-minute armchair connecting time whether you’re connecting into a half hourly local train – ‘oh I’ve missed it, there’s another one thirty minutes later’ – or it’s a sleeper train – ‘oh I’ve missed it, I’m stuffed’. You pad – you create firebreaks where, if you’re making a really long journey, you can catch up, even if there’s a delay and you end up on the following train.
Prioritise journey over destination
A key tenet of the slow-travel movement is to see the journey as being as much a part of the holiday as the destination. In which case, the journey itself should be high up in the decision-making process when it comes to booking your next holiday.
As for Mark’s top picks?
London to Fort William on the Caledonian Sleeper. It would take me away from London after work on a Friday on a little travelling hotel, with private rooms and a lounge. And then you wake up in the middle of the west Highlands, with a complete contrast from speeding along a four-track electric mainline at 80mph through Hemel Hempstead and Tring and places like that, to waking up at 30mph on a single track with a diesel struggling at the front in the middle of the west Highlands. Fabulous train, never get tired of that.
His other favourite is the Bernina Express from Chur to Tirano in the Swiss Alps – you can use it to get from Zürich to Italy too:
It’s obviously a lot slower because it’s narrow gauge and it goes very slowly, but you won’t care because it’s fabulous. It runs over an UNESCO-listed railway and it’s probably the best Swiss-Alpine train you can take. And on the website you’ll find a clever way of doing it for €29.90.
Don’t worry about sleeping
Anyone who starts to travel more widely by train will soon realise that booking sleepers is the only way to go if you want to save time. But not everyone finds it easy to drop off on a moving vehicle. Mark advises:
The trick is not to worry whether you do or don’t. When I first took a sleeper train, and we’re talking the 1980s, I didn’t know if I got the best value by going to sleep and using it or staying awake and enjoying it – I was pulled both ways. Just don’t worry about it. If you worry about it, you’ll lie awake worrying about it. Don’t worry and you’ll sleep when you’re ready. And it’s lovely snuggling between crisp sheets, reading by the glow of your berth light and listening to the steel wheels swishing on steel rail.
There’s that train romanticism again; oh, to hear the swish of wheel on rail!
His final tip, of which I fully approve: ‘A good nightcap helps.’
The way Anna Hughes talks about travel makes me want to ease off the gas and go lie in a hammock some place. It sounds so gentle, so low impact, so … relaxing. In fact, it gives me a flashback to my last time in an airport – Singapore’s swish Changi Airport to be exact – where, nauseous and disorientated, I struggled across its shiny-floored acres desperately searching for somewhere to buy a bottle of water. When I finally did, I realised I hadn’t been through security yet and would have to chuck it or chug it, which almost brought me to tears.
The founder of Flight Free UK stopped flying more than a decade ago and doesn’t seem to have had any regrets about her choice in that time:
I prefer slow travel anyway – feeling the ground beneath my feet. I don’t like the artificiality of planes. I feel like jetlag is your body’s way of saying, ‘please don’t do that!’ It’s unnatural. I enjoy the slow life.
There are instances where she has to say no to opportunities – social events abroad, for example – but these are infrequent enough that it seems a small price to pay. There is wistful talk, too, of blowing all her carefully accrued carbon credit on one big trip after a lifetime’s dedication – ‘I could fly to Indonesia and stuff myself with street food!’ – but this, too, is spoken of in much the same way I talk about buying a run-down chateau in rural France and moving there to write. In short: it ain’t going to happen:
I don’t really think I would. I’ve lived so consciously up until now. And, when I’m retired, I’ll actually have the time to go by boat! I’ll probably never get on a plane again. Unless carbon neutral planes are invented.
Until that day, Anna is on a one-woman mission to get people in the UK to sign up to take a year off flying. It all started when she was asked to contribute to an aviation discussion on a radio show, during which Maja Rosen, who’d started the Flight Free 2019 campaign in Sweden, was also being interviewed. ‘I thought it sounded amazing,’ says Anna. ‘Given the situation we’re now in, I felt like it was no longer enough to reduce my own carbon footprint – I needed to open it up and do more. And it took over my life.’
Asking participants to commit to just one year of staying grounded is all part of the game plan:
It’s to hook people in – telling people to give up flying forever is unlikely to appeal. But if you challenge them to take a year off, that short-term change can lead to long-term change. It’s the same principle as veganism and challenging people to try Veganuary.
We humans are very adaptable but very reluctant to change our habits. If you take on the challenge, you’ll probably adapt really well. In a way, it’s easier to say to yourself you’re cutting something out completely for a while than trying to reduce.
She tells me this long before the Covid-19 pandemic took over the world, but her words seem strangely prescient as I recall them now. Because one thing it proved irrefutably is that, yes, we may not like change – but we’re awfully good at it. The unthinkable happened – life as we knew it came to a standstill – and five minutes later we were hosting Zoom dinner parties and taking virtual cooking classes. And, of course, not flying.
One of Anna’s tips for the flight-free life is, naturally, checking out the seat61 website (told you, everyone knows about it). But what else?
It’s perfectly possible to still travel even without flying. Be prepared to look a little harder than you would for flights – and be prepared to make the most of the journey. It will probably take longer to get there, but you can really do things with that journey: look out the window, read, catch up on your emails, make a phone call. It entails approaching travel in a whole different way; there has to be a slight shift in mindset.
That unholiest of portmanteaus, ‘staycation’, is back on the table too. ‘You don’t have to travel far at all – the UK is amazing. It’s about not overlooking what we have here and reconnecting with local treasures. Don’t look at it as a sacrifice. It’s an enriching experience.’
There’s a lesser-known idea that took hold in Sweden off the back of the flygskam movement, and it’s less about shame and more about hope. At the same time that some campaigners were focused on warning people off flying, others were shaping the conversation around what we should be doing instead: taking the train. People started posting pictures and descriptions of their train journeys on social media; they were creating excitement around it, building each other up, inspiring each other. And thus the ‘tagskryt’ – ‘train brag’ – concept was born.
Its de facto founder, Susanna Elfors, was really just trying to find a way to travel more sustainably herself when she set up the Tågsemester (Train Holiday) Facebook group in 2014. She wasn’t looking to start a global movement. Just get a conversation going, share some tips, be a resource for others who wanted to fly less:
For a long time, I knew flying wasn’t a sustainable way to travel. Colleagues who work in transport told me. Plus, I think most people have known for the last ten to fifteen years – but they didn’t want to know. You want to pretend it’s not true, because flying is easy and fun. Even those who are environmentally conscious can ignore it: research shows they are likely to fly further than other people. They’re more likely to get on a long-haul flight to Vietnam or Guatemala, go on an eco tour, stay at an eco lodge. While flying halfway around the world!
Research even shows that climate change researchers can be blind to the issue – they fly more than any other group of academics.2
Working in sustainable housing at the time, Susanna didn’t want to become just another person paying lip service to a green lifestyle while not following through. So she took a train holiday to Lake Garda in Italy with the Swedish arm of Thomas Cook, and what ensued was a huge disparity between her expectations and reality:
I thought the journey would be great. I’d imagined there would be lots of things to do, a bar with a welcome drink, a nice dinner, a talk about our destination before going to your nice sleeper carriage … but it wasn’t like that at all! We had to change trains several times.
Susanna followed it up with a train trip to Berlin, which again proved more difficult and uncomfortable than she had expected. And that’s when the idea for a Facebook group was born, to get people sharing their tips, their favourite journeys and their recommendations for how to book. It started small and then, four years later, Greta Thunberg had her big moment and train bragging took on a life of its own. The group swelled to more than 100,000, Susanna was invited to the European Parliament to give her views on sustainable travel, and she somehow appeared on Japanese TV (the ultimate dream).
Along with a colleague, she decided to harness this energy and appetite and start up a company. They’ve organised group train holidays for members of the Tågsemester group, a meet-up event that had more than 1,000 attendees, and now they’re pivoting towards helping train companies promote themselves:
We are more for train brag than flight shame. There should be a tension between despair and hope when it comes to climate change. If people think there’s no point and it’s too late to do anything, they’ll continue flying. And the same thing happens if you’re told you can’t travel at all. But if you’re given an alternative – that you can still travel, but more sustainably – you feel hope.
The group has never been about telling people they have to give up flying; it’s about inspiring people via the beauty of rail travel. ‘Then you get people on the fringes,’ says Susanna. It means that members broadly fall into two categories: environmentalists and, in Susanna’s words, ‘train nerds’. The latter ‘hate Greta’ but they have the kind of useful knowledge about timetables and itineraries that everyone benefits from. And who knows? They might just become converts to the cause, given enough time and persuasion:
There’s an important social component about the group. Before, people bragged about going on flights. They’d put their pictures on Facebook. But what about if people could do the same thing going by train? And have other people commenting on their post saying, ‘this looks great!’? If you want to change people’s habits, it’s very important that they feel like they’re doing something good and that they’ve found their tribe. You do what your neighbours do and what your friends do.
Susanna quickly came to the same realisation as Mark Smith – that the appetite for slow travel existed, but there was a huge knowledge gap when it came to booking trains. She lays the blame for this squarely at politicians’ doors:
It used to be quite usual to travel by train, but then something changed. In the 1930s, politicians wanted people to go by car – so they built big motorways everywhere. In the 1980s, they wanted people to go by plane – so they gave subsidies to airports to make it cheap to fly. By comparison, it’s much harder to go by train these days.
Her best advice for getting on track – pun very much intended – is to shift your mindset. ‘Philosophically, you have to change your idea of what travelling is. You have to change your idea of distances.’
So, if you have a weekend, go to a city that’s not too far from home. If you have a week, go a little further (but don’t kill yourself spending forty-eight hours non-stop on modes of transport, unless you’re into that). ‘And you can do your big trip, but you need a lot of time,’ says Susanna, ‘like in the old days, when people did the grand tour, and they went for six months to really see the world.’ Clearly, this isn’t possible for many of us – unless we’re lucky enough to be able to take a sabbatical or an adult gap year. But some countries’ annual leave policies can help make a pared-back version a reality – for instance, Austria offers twenty-five days’ statutory holiday, plus a further thirteen public holidays, totalling thirty-eight days, or seven and a half weeks. (In stark contrast, the US doesn’t have any legal minimum allowance when it comes to paid time off.)
Susanna cites a truly fabulous-sounding family trip, where taking their time meant they got to experience several holidays in one: a three-week jaunt to Croatia, stopping off in Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Ljubljana on the way. ‘We went to cities but also went swimming at the beach and walking in the mountains. You can mix vacations.’
Her more practical tips include tapping into your inner Boy/Girl Scout and being prepared for any eventuality: take games, take snacks. Heck, take some crafts. Slow travel goes a lot more slowly if you’re hungry and bored.
You’ve also got to ignore the little voice that says getting to your destination as fast as possible is the goal. Unless you’re competing in the BBC’s Race Across the World, there’s absolutely no need to be in a hurry. ‘Try not to sit for too many hours on a train,’ Susanna advises. ‘Break up the journey. See other places and take your time.’
I speak to her during lockdown – at a point when, in the UK, we could only leave the house to exercise or shop for essentials. The idea of seeing a friend in person, buying a coffee or even sitting alone in a park was still a distant dream. Small things, once taken for granted, were the stuff of deepest yearning. And so Susanna’s parting advice resonated all the more:
I think being satisfied is all about your expectations of what your life should include. If you expect you will fly a lot and see everything, you will be disappointed if you switch to slow travel. If you expect to sit in an apartment for years on end, you will think a walk in the forest is something wonderful.
As she spoke, I looked out of the window, misty-eyed, and fantasised about just such a thing – stepping between light and shade, green giants all about me soaring into the sky, the feel of rough bark under palm, the play of wind through the branches. Maybe, just maybe, our individual worlds shrank so much amid the pandemic that we really could appreciate the wonders found closer to home. Now that would be something to brag about.
Tips from a non-expert
I can hardly put myself in the same category as these hallowed flight-free experts; to them, I am but a child, taking my first faltering steps into the world of zero altitude. As I write this, it’s been just over a year since I decided to clip my wings; a year in which the travel industry as we know it came grinding to a halt. My 2020, so full of grand terrestrial plans, consisted of just three trips, with those pencilled in for the following year looking increasingly uncertain.
And yet, somehow, I feel like I’ve picked up some helpful habits along the way. I know little about booking sites or algorithms, and I think other people are probably better placed to wax lyrical about the whole ‘it’s about the journey, not the destination’ philosophy thing, but I do know something of the journey itself – and what I need as, it turns out, an incredibly fussy traveller. Here are my top tips; all of them are tailored to my particular neuroses, but hopefully some are more universal.
Download before you go
Here’s the thing about flight-free travel – it is looooong. The time can be passed easily in myriad creative ways: take a good book, a laptop, a notebook and pen for if you get inspired, some knitting if you’re into that. Regular intervals will be spent just gazing out of the window at the views while your mind wanders in pleasant aimlessness.
But, for me, there’s always a point in the journey when I no longer want to make any effort whatsoever in terms of entertaining myself – when I want to, as a friend refers to it, ‘put my brain in the ashtray’. It means doing something mindless, where you’re just passively consuming, rather than actively participating. When this moment comes, it is key that the need can be met, and that it doesn’t rely on potentially dodgy Wi-Fi. My pre-travel checklist now features downloading multiple episodes of both something light and fluffy and something absorbing and dramatic to fit whatever mood I find myself in. Episodes beat films in my experience; they feel like light bites, small plates if you will, that you can dip in and out of without being too upset if you, say, accidentally drop off in the middle of one.
Pack the snacks
Being hangry on a train, boat, bus or any form of transport is no fun. I mean, it’s also no fun on a flight – but either they are short enough that it doesn’t matter too much, or they are long enough that the airline feels obliged to feed you. The same cannot be said elsewhere. There is no guarantee that a train, even one going a long distance, will have a proper restaurant carriage, bar car or little shop. They may not even have a cute snack trolley. Always go armed with more than you need, and enough food and drink that, if you couldn’t buy anything to eat for the entirety of your journey, you’d still be OK.
Food is one of my favourite things about travel, so I probably think about this more than is entirely normal. Regardless, I like to build my travelling sustenance out of things I’ll look forward to, treats that will punctuate the day with extra joy. Oh, and remember to opt for snacks that aren’t too pungent – no one wants to be that passenger – and that preferably don’t require you carting around dirty Tupperware for hours on end.
Accessorise your sleep
You’ll read about this in other chapters of the book, but it’s always worth saying it again – if you’re staying overnight on a form of transport, don’t shy away from being a high-maintenance traveller. Whether it’s a sleeper train or an overnight ferry, catching zzzs on the move can be harder than you think, even with stellar facilities and an actual bed. Getting your kit and routine down can really help.
Top of my list is a really, really good eye mask. Mine is moulded so that it blocks out the light. I’ve also heard good things about the Ostrich Pillow, a mask and pillow in one worn over your head. If you can suck up the judgemental stares (which you won’t be able to see from inside your giant, alien-like head cocoon anyway), the reward might be the nap of a lifetime. Other failsafes include a quality travel neck pillow that can also be used as a regular pillow; a micro-towel that can be used as a blanket; bed socks and multiple bedtime layers (trains and the like can get pretty nippy); and wraparound wireless headphones to listen to calming music as you drift off (I am not responsible enough to be trusted with extremely losable ear buds). Select your soundtrack with care: Max Richter’s Sleep album has been my go-to for every overnight trip during the last eighteen months.
I also like to pop a melatonin pill, which gives you a natural dose of the hormone responsible for making you feel sleepy. It’s not for everyone – and, sadly, you can’t buy these delightful sleep aids over the counter in the UK. But a Nytol or other herbal sleeping tab might just give you the final shove needed to stumble over the border and into the land of nod.
Seats are OK
Some people will tell you to only travel in a berth or couchette on a sleeper train, which comes with a proper bed. I’m mostly with them – obviously, it is approximately 1,000 times nicer – but life doesn’t always work out that way.
Maybe you’re strapped for cash. Perhaps all the beds are taken. I’ve been in this situation a couple of times and believe me when I say I was terrified of sleeping in a seat. I do not sleep well when not horizontal. And I take my sleep seriously – it would be my religion if I hadn’t already found God. I talk about it an unnecessary amount, I look forward to it, and I worry when it looks like I’m not going to get enough of it. But, as it turns out, with some good prep and winding down, even I managed to drift in and out of slumber. I’m not going to pretend it compares to the quality of sleep you get in a bed, but it’s not as bad as you might think. The main thing is to build in some time to nap the day you arrive at your destination – around 3–4 p.m. is my crash point. And don’t feel guilty about it either; you’ve saved money, you can afford a couple of hours between the sheets.
Analogue itinerary
We are digital animals these days, especially when it comes to travel. Timetables, tickets, connections and platforms can all be accessed at the click of a button. But things can go awry. Namely, your smartphone could run out of battery with no access to a plug or battery pack, or you could find yourself with no internet signal at a critical moment (both of which have happened to me). I am an old-fashioned cat, and so I always like to be prepared should I be stranded in a tech-free wasteland. Call me crazy, but I write down or print off a full itinerary – including key contact names and numbers, transport and hotel details and whatever else I can think of – plus physical print-outs of my tickets, and carry them somewhere accessible at all times. As much as I love my phone, my phone doesn’t love me back. I never want to be so reliant on it that I can’t survive without it.
Sea off sickness
Getting travel sick wasn’t something I thought about until I boarded a boat to the Isles of Scilly and surfed upon a giant wave of nausea all the way there. It shouldn’t put you off the flight-free life though – you’ve just got to strategise. If you know you’re susceptible, look into medication before you go. Sea bands can help, as can timing when you eat: board a vessel feeling neither hungry nor full, meaning there’s less scope for agitating your stomach.
For some, being out on deck in the fresh air can help. For others, descending to the lowest level of the ship, which is actually the most stable point, can be best. Find what works for you – but also find and familiarise yourself with the route to the toilet and locate a sick bag. I’m sure seasickness is what the Scouts were referencing when they came up with that ‘Always be prepared’ motto.