The year of travelling sustainably

This year I decided to give up on flying, to reduce my contribution to oil depletion and climate change. I just couldn't stand any more the contradiction between giving talks about how important it is to change and at the same time being a living proof of somebody who can't be bothered to do the necessary changes. The trip to Zurich I described in my previous post was by train. It was also a clear proof why it's so difficult to change.

First of all, it was expensive. I didn't ask the travel agency to do the costing for the same trip flying, and it would probably be expensive as well, because it was a triangle London-Zurich-La Coruna, and that is usually about the same price as three return flights. But the face of the girl said it all: she couldn't believe somebody would voluntarily subject themselves to longer travelling times and pay substantially more as well.

The problems began at the beginning. The train from London came out early on a Sunday. When I checked timetables for the train that would arrive to London in time, I discovered the only suitable train was the night train, departing around 4 in the morning, and it wouldn't even be a train but a replacement bus, because there were engineering works going on. I thought I'd better catch the last train of the day instead and spend the night in London, but I got to the train station too late for that. So I caught a nap at my ex's place (he gave me the keys for it), before going to where I believed the replacement bus should have been. It definitely wasn't there. At 4 in the morning, there aren't many options to get to London, and I had to catch a taxi. It was, as you can imagine, about the same price as the ticket from London to Paris.

Then, the train from London to Paris got delayed for some 'technical reasons' that were never clearly explained. The result of that was that I arrived to the Gare d'Est, where I was supposed to catch the train that would take me to Zurich, just in time to watch the train leave the station. The staff at the station were quite nice and they changed my ticket for another two that would still get me to Zurich on the same day, changing at Milhouse. So I finally arrived at Zurich, four hours later than expected but in one piece.

The sustainability conference at Zurich was quite interesting, as I described in the previous post. One of the interesting things was that not many people had chosen the train option, in spite of all being convinced of the dangers of climate change. For example, the guy that was involved in the carbon capture and storage demonstration plant claimed that the solution to the problem of transport was to make all vehicles electric and all electricity carbon neutral, but he didn't quite explain how electric airplanes are supposed to function. He justified coming by plane by saying that he valued highly his family time, and that the carbon had been offset. He was quite unconcerned that the oil was gone anyway, and that he had no solid proof the carbon offset had actually happened, and might have been a fraud. I wondered if his children and grandchildren will one day come back to him asking him how could he fly to sustainability conferences, and if they will find acceptable the excuse "it was to spend more time with you", or they will argue that videoconferencing was already fully developed and would have given him even more family time. Compare and contrast this with the Italian guy, that not only came by train, but commutes to work usually by electric bike charged on his photovoltaic panel.

The trip from Zurich back to Paris was uneventful, but once in Paris the problems started again. The train that was supposed to take me to Spain was not on the board. When I asked the staff about it, they explained there was a strike, and no trains on the next day, either, because of bad weather on the South of France. They helpfully offered me a bunk to sleep on for the night in the same train that I was supposed to take but wasn't leaving Paris at all, and I accepted. I concluded that the gods were sending me a very clear message that I should take a mini-break in Paris, which I did.

In spite of not being able to give the talk on Transition Towns, it all went well. My mother told me that people had come from all over the place, some of them 200km away, to hear me explain how Transition is supposed to work. When I didn't arrive, the ones that knew more about it did some additional Internet searches and gave a talk to the rest. That was just the right spirit! I have sent them all my congratulations through my mother, but they still want me to go and give them a talk later on.

In the meantime, I got myself a hotel in Paris right next to the Gare du Nord, where I was supposed to leave, to reduce to a minimum the chances of any more mishaps. How wrong I was! For the first two days, everything was fine. On the third day, I arrived to a hotel in the dark. The electricity was off, they had no idea when it would return, and they were sending everybody to a different hotel. This was clearly a localized event in one building, not one of those massive blackouts that could indicate more general problems with the electricity supply... but made me wonder what could be in store in the future. If travelling can be such an adventure today, what should I expect in ten years' time?

Finally, when I got myself on the train from Paris to London, and arrived safely at London, I let out a sigh of relief, thinking that was the end of my train adventures. Once again, I was wrong. My destination wasn't London, but Brighton. When I went down to the tube to change to Victoria station, I discovered the Victoria line that I intended to take wasn't running because of engineering works. And after the more complicated tube journey to get to Victoria station, I found out there were again engineering works on the line from London to Brighton, but luckily this time there would be no replacement buses, the trains were just doing a detour to get to Brighton and would take somewhat longer to get there.

And even arriving at Brighton wasn't the end of the adventure. When I arrived, it was snowing. I thought: "Great! I'll just get my bag in the houseboat and then come back to the centre of town to take photos of snow." I assumed the snowfall would be brief and melt quickly, as it always has been every time I had seen snow in Brighton before, just a chance to take some pretty pictures. This was the exception. After spending some great time chatting with my friend the Mad Scientist, it became clear that there was enough snow to make the prospect of walking along the snow-covered pontoons a tricky proposition. I called then my friend the Buddhist Engineer and asked him if I could borrow his spare bed for the night, and he was happy with that.

On Monday, I was meant to go up to Lewes to be a witness for the court case of my ex (I have explained the details in other posts). Looking at the levels of snow in the streets, I supposed trains would be more likely to get me there than buses, but even that was a close call. All the trains going North were cancelled, and the trains going East and West were touch and go. I finally got myself to Lewes, only to discover the courts were closed and they weren't quite sure when the cases that were supposed to go on would actually happen.

All in all, trying to travel sustainably can bring much more excitement than initially expected. But, the way things are going, it looks like not many people will be mad enough to choose that option voluntarily. They will start doing it only as more and more airlines become bankrupt, and the planes they intended to catch simply stop being available.