Sarah Webb's holiday by train

Like most people, I am concerned about Climate Change, especially when I read recently that we, ‘the public' are responsible for roughly 50% of the UK's carbon emissions directly, through private domestic transport and energy use in the home. I could use the ‘China' excuse - ‘Why should I bother to change my habits when China will soon be emitting co2 far in excess of the UK?' But that didn't wash - apparantly the average Chinese citizen produces only a quarter of the co2 that a British citizen produces. Also I'm not sure whether it is fair to criticise the co2 produced by the Chinese manufacturing industry when they are providing the goods that we consume in the UK?

We decided it was time to accept ourselves as part of the problem and part of the solution to Climate Change so we looked to see what changes we would make as a family to reduce our co2 emissions.  Transport was a good place to start, we've all heard that pollution from flights are pretty nasty - we decided to travel by train for our ski holiday, this would save 90% of our CO2 emissions compared to flying.  My husband, Jon and I have a 4 year old daughter, Ollie so it was also a good move as Ollie would be able to move around during the journey.  We chose a daytime train, which departed & arrived at a much more reasonable hour than the flights would have. We did a price comparison with the ‘budget airlines' and the cheapest one came out at £4 more expensive than our Eurostar tickets.

We took the train from Reading to London Waterloo (there are plans afoot to add London St Pancras as a departure point), choosing this slow, but direct train route rather than get to Paddington and tube around London with our luggage in tow.

We only needed to check in 30 minutes before departure with Eurostar - much better than  hanging around an airport for 2+ hours, and also saving us messing around with carparking and bussing to the airport.

We only booked our holiday two weeks before leaving, so, unfortunately, there were no tickets left for the direct ‘snow train' to Moutiers (in France).  For the outbound journey, therefore, we needed to change in Paris, catch the RER (tube) round to Gare Du Lyon and catch the extremely fast and luxurious TGV (fast French train) to Moutiers.  In hindsight, 45 minutes was just not enough time to make this connection - especially when we didn't know where to go and had no tickets.  But after legging it down the platform 2 minutes after the departure time of the TGV we just managed to scramble onboard before the train ‘took off'.

The TGV was great - it was a double decker train and standard class was far better than 1^st class here in the UK - super wide seats, loads of isle space, a good range of inexpensive food, snacks and drinks and very clean.  Even Olivia was impressed ‘Ooooooh, nice big seats!' she exclaimed as we jumped onboard.  There's no pulling the wool over her eyes!

Another great benefit of going by train was that the transfer to resort is very short.  We bundled into a taxi at Moutiers train station and just 20 minutes later we arrived at our booked chalet in La Tania (part of 3 Valleys ski area).

We had a great week's skiing and managed to avoid any major injuries - we consumed far too much food and wine and I'm sure we left La Tania a bit ‘wider' than when we arrived.. 

The return journey was a doddle as we had tickets for the direct Eurostar train straight back to Waterloo.  I'd recommend taking your own picnic on board - our train ran out of sandwiches only an hour after leaving Moutiers.  Eurostar do seemed to have tried hard with making their food eco-friendly though, using faritrade produce, innocent smoothies, organic coffee, and reasonably priced too.  Unfortunately we had only crisps, nuts and a bit of brioche for the 6hr 45min journey and I was envisaging tantrums (from husband mostly!).  But it wasn't as bad as I thought - as our train left Moutiers at a thoroughly reasonable time of 10.45am we had managed a cooked breakfast before leaving our chalet, Olivia didn't even say she was hungry.

We got into Waterloo on time at 4.30pm UK time, and grabbed a bite to eat at the station before catching the next train back to Reading.  The return journey took 11 hours door to door, and the outbound journey took 12 hours.  I reckon, taking into account driving to the airport, parking, bussing to the airport, checking in & waiting around for 2 hours before departure, going on the flight, collecting luggage, going through passport control, waiting for a coach transfer and coaching to the resort, ususally quite a distance from the airport  (and dropping everyone else on the coach off before you - isn't that always the way?), we were probably about an hour behind the ‘flying' option.

So, comparing going by train against flying, we paid about the same price as a budget flight, we were much more comfortable during the journey and took about an hour longer.  Catching the Eurostar was a thoroughly enjoyable and hassle-free experience and I'm currently collecting my Telegraph tokens to get a £45 return ticket to Paris - nice one!  Having looked at the other destinations for Eurostar and connecting TGVs, La Rochelle is looking a nice summertime option for this year, or maybe next year.  Then there's Bruges, Bordeaux, Marseille... so by making a decision to really DO SOMETHING about Climate Change rather than just ‘be concerned' about it, we have had a much nicer journey, saved lots of co2 emissions and not had to ‘put ourselves out' at all.  We can all make small changes to the way we normally do things that will have a significant impact on our own co2 emissions, we just need to sit back and think ‘Is there another way to do this?' - and sometimes the answer is ‘yes - and a much better way'.