Soup of the Day

Europe, a low-carb weekend break

On Friday Siân and I head off to Brussels and Amsterdam for a long-weekend away. It is a much needed break, but this is also a prototype for a much bigger endevour.

This summer we are planning to take a month out and complete a tour of Eastern and Western Europe by rail. We hope to demonstrate that journeys to Europe can be made using conventional rail rather than airlines, reducing the carbon emissions produced by the trip.

Last year Siân and I completed a two week holiday to Nice using Pendelino, Eurostar and TGV from Manchester all the way to Nice. It took ten hours to get to Nice from Manchester, which is eight hours more than flying, but we used a fifth of the carbon that would have been released by a jet aircraft.

The extra travelling time gave us lots of opportunities to do other things. Siân spent most of the journey watching The Lord of the Rings special editions from beginning to end. I read up on DOM Scripting courtasy of Jeremy Keith. But it wasn’t all relaxed air-conditioned bliss. On the return journey, we were on a TGV heading for Lille (by-passing Paris). At Marsielles a family borded the train with what could only be described as a demon child. This kid was hell bent on making everyones journey a nightmare, giving us a good reason to make frequent trips to the bar.

But as with life, you have to take the rough with the smooth and after we got off the TGV in Lille and boarded our Eurostar, we met a lovely French teacher who was heading to England to teach in London. For two hours we talked about all of the European issues of the day, got a very interesting perspective on the UK from a Lillite and we got her very drunk in the process. Meeting the teacher and enjoying conversation and drinks as we floated in to London made the previous three hours with Damien fade away into a distant memory.

2007 is quite a momentus year for European High Speed Rail. In March the new HSL Zuid line opens between Belgium and Amsterdam, Netherlands. This will reduce the journey time between Brussels and Amsterdam from two hours and forty minutes to one hour and twenty minutes. In June the new LGV (Lignes à Grande Vitesse) Est européenne will open, dramitically reducing journey times between Paris, Metz and Frankfurt, Germany. Finally the HS1 High Speed Line between the Channel Tunnel and London St Pancras, enabling Eurostars’ to cruise at 187mph towards the continent opens on the 14th November.

Sadly for us, the HSL Zuid will not be open for our journey from Brussels to Amsterdam on Saturday, but at two and half hours we’ll survive in Comfort 1 on the luxerious Thalys. Amazingly it has cost us £50.00 to get a return ticket between Brussels and Amsterdam in first class for a distance of 280 miles, a second class ticket was £27.50 at the time of writing. Conversely a ticket between Manchester and London (Return) in second class cost us £100.00 per person, for a distance of 200 miles. This may be a reason why mainland Europeans are embracing rail as an alternative to air a lot faster than we are.

For the time being HS1 is going to be the only High Speed Line in the United Kingdom, but just because our railway network is woefully dated compared to Western (and Eastern) European standards, it doesn’t mean one shouldn’t use it over a plane or car.

The trip this summer will be a real challenge. One month to take in ten countries all traversed by rail. I will be documenting the whole thing and hopefully presenting it as a case study for the environmentally friendly holiday.