The Great European Train Renaissance

Have you met the new breed of the international smart set who have taken the flight-free-for-a year oath? Fans of Zero Altitude, the book by former travel journalist and self-confessed Air Miles junkie, Helen Coffey, they’re jumping on trains to anywhere and everywhere. And their timing is spot-on. Because, spurred on by climate change concerns, Europe is in the midst of a great train renaissance. Our founder, Lucy, joined in and trained it back from Florence.

Photo Credit: British Pullman, collaborated with Wes Anderson to design one of their Belmond trains

Like pretty much everyone, I’m fully aware that climbing onto an aeroplane is not good for my personal carbon footprint. But I’m a traveller at heart and the idea of never flying again is one step too far for me, so I’ve come up with my own personal compromise: travel abroad for longer, less often, and, fly one way and take the train the other. It’s an approach that’s got a reassuring smack of imperfection.

It’s also how I ended up running the gauntlet of airport security at Heathrow on the way to Italy for the Easter holidays. As an ex-foreign correspondent I’ve had less agro at a checkpoint than I did in Terminal 5 security. The lowest point was witnessing our 11-year-old son being comprehensively frisked for accidentally leaving his wallet in his pocket. 

Ham-fisted airport security is one reason why people are swapping the airport stress-fest for step-aboard trains. The other is a dawning realisation that if you’re someone who travels abroad more than once a year, the quickest way to make a serious dent in your carbon footprint is to swap some of those flights for train rides.

Take Emma Cripwell, who quit her role as an international travel consultant to become publicist for the home-grown boutique hotel group, The Pig, so she could stop flying as much: "As part of the 1% of the global population responsible for half of air travel's carbon emissions, I really don't want to be a part of being held responsible for dozens of bird and animal species becoming extinct, plus vulnerable communities in Africa and India subject to droughts or flooding. It doesn't sit at all comfortably with me”. She’s since taken the flight-free-for-a-year oath and loved it.

Lucky then that Europe’s train companies are stepping up to cater for the former jet-setters.

All aboard: Midnight Trains will offer chic-hotels-on-rails around Europe from next year

Imagine jumping on board a Eurostar in the late afternoon to dine in Paris, hanging out at a bar, then going to bed and waking up in Rome. If this sounds like a dream, it’s soon to become a reality with French start-up Midnight Trains on track to launch their hotels-on-rails trains to 10 European capitals next year.

You’d need to make the journey to Rome 23 times this way to catch up with your airborne carbon footprint. No wonder it’s got appeal.

Austria’s Night Jet now serves 25 European cities and, last year, European Sleepers reinstated a night train linking Brussels to Berlin for the first time in a decade. Last month, it extended it to Prague. The new overnight lines keep on coming.

Why not take the train to Florence for some Renaissance culture?

Emma tells me that her flight free year has been her best ever year of travel: quite something coming from a woman who has spent much of her career on planes to some of the most glamorous spots on earth.

Emily Maitland is a psychotherapist who has gone one step further and taken a flight-free-for-life oath. She says she has no regrets at all and is living the travel dream. “One memorable day’s train journey was to a walking holiday in the Black Forest when we changed trains in Brussels and had time for lunch in the beautiful Grand Place, and then with another change in Cologne, there was time for tea in the shadow of the great cathedral - all before getting to Freiburg in time for dinner. It felt like a proper travel experience.”

And how about my train trip home from Florence?

A mudslide had shut the main line from Milan to Paris so I rerouted via the night train from Nice to Paris. To my amazement, my seat number had me lounging in epically comfortable business class on the Florence-Milan Intercity, despite having not paid much for my ticket. With a steady flow of free coffee and lightning-speed WiFi, I passed a very comfortable 2 hours to Milan, catching up with emails.

After a quick transfer to the next door platform for the train to Ventimiglia, on the French-Italian border, I hit my first snag. Strangely, there was no WiFi on the 4 hour train ride which put paid to my plans to work. Instead I gazed out of the window. And that’s when I realised the lack of WiFi was just what I needed. 

After an hour or two, the train reaches the azure blue of the Mediterranean. It flits between plunging into coal-black tunnels and emerging into the brilliant sunlight of the Italian Riviera. The glinting sea, beach cafes and palm promenades are a live-stream Mediterranean movie.

France’s south coast train line skirts along the Cote D’Azur

I switched trains at the French border and hugged the Cote d’Azur to Nice. There, after a simple cafe supper, I boarded the night train bound for Paris. This is where I thought the wheels could be falling off my plan. I was sure I’d booked myself into first class with 3 other berths. But no, I seemed to be in a jam-packed couchette with 5 other women in a replay of my student back-packing years.

And just like my backpacking years, the rumbling snores of strangers was worth it for a fellow traveller I began chatting to in the morning, and didn’t stop chatting to for the next few hours as our delayed train spluttered into Paris. A photo documentary maker, we discovered an array of mutual interests and friends.

That's the joy of travel: the blurring borders of countries and dissolving social boundaries, where a simple conversation over coffee becomes a new connection. We parted ways at Paris Austerlitz station, having swapped numbers, and I stepped into a spring day. My destination: a classic Parisienne bistro for lunch with my favourite American in Paris.

An artist and writer, she regaled me with entertaining tales of Hollywood agents and casting directors, as we enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the spring sunshine. After a few happy hours, I sauntered on to the Eurostar and headed home. And the rest of my family? My husband decided to take them home by plane. They’d spent a night at an indifferent airport hotel in Rome and were getting up early to face the security queues.

I know which journey I preferred.

Want to read Zero Altitude by Helen Coffey? You can buy it from the Green Salon Bookshop here. If you’d like to find out how to get to Morocco by train, you can read my account of that train journey here. And let us know in the comments how you’d feel about going flight free for a year.

How much it cost to travel home from Italy by train:

Travelling home from Italy by train rather than plane cut the carbon emissions of my homeward journey by a staggering 96 percent*, but the reality is that travelling by train still works out, for most routes, more expensive than flying.

I worked out my travel itinerary through The Man in Seat 61 website, that details just about any train journey in the world you want to make. All train tickets were bought less than 3 months in advance and booked on Trainline, except for the Eurostar booking.

Florence - Ventimiglia. Cost: £61.71

Ventimiglia - Nice. Cost: £8.25

Nice - Paris (Couchette). Cost: £85.21

Paris - London. Cost: £115

Total cost: £270.17

At Green Salon we believe in progress not perfection, so I flew to Italy on British Airways at a cost of £188.50 and took the train home.

* I used the World Land Trust transport calculator to find out the carbon footprint of my train trip home, which totalled 0.009 tonnes. By contrast, the flight from London to Rome emitted 0.22 tonnes.