Why rail travel?

We are Ric and Sarah and in 2011 we discovered the joys of continental train travel.

Over the last few years flying has become perhaps the least attractive mode of transport available, far from the glamour of its early days, as well as being extremely bad for the environment. Getting to the airport hours ahead of departure, restrictions on what you can carry, being crammed on to steel tubes and breathing recycled air until you're dumped miles outside your final destination was bad enough. Then when they started demanding you take your shoes off at airports, that was it; flying was out.

We love crossing countries by train; the journey becomes an integral part of our holidays, starting at Fratton station, in a way that it never did when flying, and we've discovered that it's quite easy, and significantly cheaper, to book your own travel and hotel arrangements with the help of The Man in Seat 61, RailEurope, and Booking.com (and others) so that planning the trip becomes part of the fun.

This blog will document our travels and impressions as well as occasionally talking about travel issues and future plans. I hope you enjoy reading it.

p.s. at the foot of each post I'll enter a basic "Carbon saved" total, based on figures worked out at calculator.carbonfootprint.com comparing distance travelled by train against flights starting from and returning to Heathrow.