A weekend break is the kind of trip that seems impossible to swap with a train journey. And environmentally it is probably the worst type of holiday, as we pollute so much simply for escaping the daily grind for a couple of days.

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​So, let's start by busting a myth about flightless travel. For a long time, I thought going flightless was only a viable option for longer journeys - of at least a week. Flying, I used to think, was much faster than train travel.

 

Indeed, there are many cases where this is true. But there are also cases when train travel is only marginally slower.

 

The average European flight is two to three hours. Add to that that you need to travel to the airport to catch your plane, and from the airport to the arrival city when you land. You are also expected to be at the airport two hours before your flight.

 

When you add all these times up, a two-hour flight is comparable to a five or six-hour train journey.

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We are all willing to get ourselves to an airport for a long weekend. So why not to a train station? 

 

Besides, not all journeys are merely ways of getting to a destination. If you go on a scenic train ride, your journey and you destination will coincide.

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So let's look at some options.  If your departure point is one of the city's below, click on it to find out what destinations you could reach by train in the same time it would take you to fly there - and what you could see on the journey.

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If your departure point is not featured, drop me a message through the contact form and I will endeavour to cover it as soon as I can.