2600 miles by train: My research conference journey and why I loved every minute
15 Jul 2024
SALC Professor Thea Cameron-Faulkner details their experience of travelling environmentally responsible for a recent research conference to Poland.
Picturesque; if I had to explain Kazimierz Dolny in a word, that would be it. However, there’s a lot more to say about this quaint little Polish village that is just hours away from Warsaw, why I was there and, the main purpose of this blog, how I got there.
My trip to Eastern Poland signified the end of the European Research Council twinning project Traincrease. Led by Professor Rączaszek-Leonardi from the University of Warsaw, and alongside colleagues from Denmark, Italy and the UK, we embarked on our quest to reach our closing event, hosted in the ever-so charming, Kazimierz Dolny.
This seemed like the perfect opportunity to re-engage with European long distance train travel. So, after considerable planning and more time than I care to mention on the Key travel website I started my journey.
Belgium bound
Stage one began with a five-minute walk to the local train station and on board a Northern rail train to Stockport. A quick switch to board the Euston-bound Avanti West Coast service, getting me into London ready for the European leg of the journey to start. After a short walk from one major London transport hub to the other, I arrived at St. Pancras and boarded the Eurostar, heading to Brussels. There had to be to some delays but overall it was a pretty good start. After travelling for over 10 hours, I arrived in Belgium’s capital city for an overnight stay.
Euro adventure
As the Belgium sun rose, I was ready for the European leg of the trip to begin. My first train of the day took me from Brussels Midi over the German border to the beautiful city of Cologne. There wasn’t much time to explore as the Berlin train awaited but it’s now definitely on my list of places to visit. After a couple of hours, we arrived at Berlin Ost, adding a third capital city to the trip. Warsaw would be my fourth and final capital city and with the workshop just two hours from Warsaw, I stayed overnight before heading to Kazimierz Dolny on the Wednesday morning. Travelling by train led to many interesting dinner time conversations during the conference and colleagues had several tales to tell.
The eventful, inevitable return
I began my journey back to the UK on the Friday, doing the outbound trip in reverse. Everything was running smoothly until I boarded the Berlin to Cologne service; then we ran into problems. There was a medical emergency on board and also a fallen tree on the line (according to the Deusche Bahn app). The hour-long delay meant I missed my Cologne connection, so I boarded the four-hour local service train hopping detour. I finally arrived in Brussels at 1.00am which, given where I was staying, is not something I’d recommend. The next day I was back on the Eurostar and by Sunday evening, I was finally back home. In total the trip involved 2,600 miles of train travel and more hours than I’m prepared to count. I loved every minute.
What would have helped?
A better booking system! The trip involved four hotel stays and multiple train journeys. Hours were spent planning the trip but when it came to booking the Key travel website couldn’t cope with the complexity. A phone call to the KT rep sorted out most things. It would also be very helpful to get a final ‘scores on the doors’ emissions figure for the trip as a whole.
A more reliable train network both in the UK and across Europe
A number of companies committed to sustainable travel have been applying pressure to governments to sort out the network. Maybe we could follow suit? My trip would have been a whole lot faster if I hadn’t had to plan in multiple ‘fire breaks’ in case of delays. As it turned out, even these breaks weren’t enough for a seamless journey.
Final thoughts
The key motivation for taking the train rather than the plane was environmental but there were individual benefits too. Travelling by train was significantly more relaxing than plane travel, at least for me. Travelling through towns, cities, the countryside and seeing people living their lives from one country to the next was a privilege and hopefully in the near future will be a normalised form of travel rather than a blog-worthy experience. At this point in time, long haul train travel is not an option that everyone would have the time to do and I definitely checked my privileges along the way.
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