The age of steam (well, modern rail travel)

52% of respondents said they would consider rail travel as 'a serious alternative' to flying.

This is really interesting. The advent of mass air travel opened up the world in a way that had never been seen before. You could get almost anywhere just a few hours. For example, flying to New York from London takes around 7 hours, compared to anything from 7 to 16 nights on a transatlantic cruise.

Of course, you can't take a train across the Atlantic, but you can get across to continental Europe by train and from there can go anywhere. Did you know that it is even possible to get from Lagos in Portugal to Beijing in China purely by train (it will take you 3 weeks though!).

We used rail as an alternative to flying last summer - though it wasn't through choice. We were due to fly home from Bordeaux with a flight leaving at 9pm. The plane was late arriving for us to board and when it did finally land we were told - at 00:15 - that the our flight was cancelled due to crew illness. With no alternative flights for 3 days we thought about driving, but it is not possible to rent a car in France for a one-way trip back to the UK. So, our only option was rail. We stayed at the airport till around 4am and then got an Uber into the station in Bordeaux. We then took the 05:18 TGV train (the super fast ones) to Paris. Coming in south of the river we had to get the metro across the city to the Gard du Nord, and then the Eurostar to St Pancras. Unfortunately our car was at Gatwick so we then had to get on another train to the airport to collect it.

We arrived back home about 20 hours after we were supposed to and with very little sleep other than what we managed to get on the trains. I should also mention that we did not use a Travel Counsellor for this and if we had then we would have had a lot less stress!

Would we do it again? Obviously the situation was less than ideal! We hadn't planned this, and we were tired. And a little bit grumpy. However, we have said we would like to do it again - just planned. For us it certainly would be a viable alternative to flying down to Bordeaux again. It was so nice to see more of France (in between napping) and we would love to do it when we are more awake. And of course there was more leg room than on a plane!

I'd definitely consider it for other destinations too. We looked at getting a train from LA to Seattle for an Alaskan cruise. I want to do a European cruise and would love to expand the trip by travelling there and back by rail.

And it's not just train from London. You could fly to Thailand for example, and do a multi centre stay using the train rather than internal flights. Or use the train to get around Japan.

So, would you consider it? Do you not like flying and don't travel well by coach/bus? Are you just looking for something different? Or do the practicalities of it make it seem scary - changing trains, planning connections? Of course, I can help you with that!