The first time I ever boarded a plane was at the age of 18, when I travelled home for Christmas from my university abroad. ‘I think you’ll like it,’ my dad had said, describing the sensation of takeoff to me the summer before I left. And I did like it. But more so than the feeling of being pushed back into my seat by a sudden burst of speed, did I enjoy the feeling of becoming a jet-setter who would, from now on, catch planes as if they were buses.
I still live a life straddling two countries and I can’t deny that I still enjoy breezing around the continent, but I can’t justify doing so by plane anymore. I took a long hard look at my values and realised I had no good reason to fly, especially not now that I am a scholar working on environmental and climate issues. Even if my impact was negligible in the grand scheme of things, I was still engaging in an activity I could not justify and participating in a culture I could not stand behind. If I have the privilege of being able to travel around Europe without flying, I believe I should use it.
Recently, I went on a conference trip to Sweden and Finland, traveling only by train and ferry. It was an ordeal to plan, but only because I hadn’t planned a complicated work trip like this before. Conference travel without flying isn’t actually that hard. It just takes some figuring out. Since I’ve already done the figuring out bit for you, here’s a guide to planning your next work trip without flying!
Step 1: Change your mindset
As academics, particularly in the early stages of our career, we’re expected to do a lot. We bounce around between research, conferences, teaching and whatever else we’re advised to do to build our CVs.
Choosing to be sustainably traveling academics generally means doing less stuff. It is slow and expensive, so it eats time and resources. You won’t be able to nip to Spain for two days, fly home in the morning and be back in time to teach in the afternoon. You won’t be able to travel everywhere you want and you’ll have to think long and hard about where you decide to go.
Don’t see this as a sacrifice, though. It isn’t. Being selective about where you go means you’ll probably just be more discriminating and choose to do what is the most important and useful to you. More really isn’t always better, and there are enough other valuable activities to participate in that don’t require you to fly to some far away place, like organising your own conferences or participating in local public engagement events.
Step 2: Find the money
Sustainable travel is expensive. Many funders state a preference for beneficiaries to travel sustainably, but the amount of funding they offer doesn’t always reflect that. It’s quite possible that you’ll have to apply for funding from multiple sources to be able to cover your trip. I had to apply for four grants from three different funders (the White Rose Consortium for Arts and Humanities, the Grantham Centre and the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities’ Research Stimulation Fund).
To avoid a scramble when you actually need funding, I suggest compiling a list of funders ahead of time. Add some bullet points with essential information like whether they have rounds with deadlines or review applications on a rolling basis, how long they take to process applications, what their funds can be spent on and how much they award. That way you can get an idea of how far ahead you need to plan trips, what your budget is and what sort of things you can spend it on.
Step 3: Start planning early and combine events
Despite what I said about doing less, you can actually cram a lot into one trip. You might be able to better justify your emissions as well as the time spent on the road if your trip is longer and you do a little more. My trip, for example, included two conferences, an invited talk and a research visit.
If you’ve applied for an event, immediately start keeping an eye out for other things to do nearby. Are there any other events happening around the same time in that country or in neighbouring countries? Look into the route to your destination - is there anything you can stop off at along the road? Are there any institutions you could pay a visit to? Academics you could meet? Here, you can use what I call the ‘might as well’-pass to tack on less important events that are good to do but not so essential that you’d make the journey for them alone.
It’s good to use your contacts here. Ask around to see if your contacts at other institutions know of any events that will be happening but aren’t published yet, or cheekily arrange to give a talk somewhere if you can. Depending on how much time and money you have at your disposal, you could link up with a connection abroad and set up an event together.
Step 4: Apply for funding and book your trip
This part is finicky, and your booking and funding application process will depend on the nature of your trip, so my advice might not be exactly fitted for your situation. If you’re only going to one destination, your budgeting will be more straightforward than if you plan on making multiple stops.
Once you’ve found something you’d like to attend, start applying for funding right away. Some funding bodies allow you to apply for funding before being accepted to present at a conference. If you don’t get accepted, you can contact them and decline the award. Overestimate your accommodation and travel costs a bit to account for dynamic pricing so you don’t end up having to deal with a much more expensive trip than you applied for.
If it is within your means, I recommend trying to find accommodation without cancellation fees and booking ahead so you can either secure a low rate or cancel if you don’t get funding. Late bookings with dynamic pricing, booked only after I had received confirmation of funding, raised the final cost of my trip by quite a bit.
For travel, figure out how to get to your destination. If you’re traveling far, I recommend splitting the trip with overnight stays and using night trains. Then, compare the price of individual tickets (and overnight stays where necessary) with the price of an Interrail/Eurail Pass. I recommend using the Interrail journey planner as well as those of local train operators, as neither tend to show all available trains. Also check local train operator websites to see what they say about Interrailers, as the Interrail website doesn’t always have detailed information. The Man in Seat 61 is also a very valuable resource here.
International high speed trains, night trains and ferries usually charge a mandatory reservation fee for Interrailers, so don’t forget to add those to your budget sheet. If the Interrail Pass is cheaper, it’s a no-brainer. If it’s only a little more expensive, however, I still recommend using an Interrail Pass. This isn’t an ad, it’s just that good.
First, the cost of an Interrail Pass is a fixed rate, as are most of the mandatory seat reservations. This means you can get away with booking them fairly late, though bear in mind that high speed train seats and some night train reservations sell out rather quickly during high seasons. The fixed rates are especially helpful when you want to tack extra destinations onto your trip. You can leave the funding application(s) for travel for last without having to worry about prices going up.
The biggest advantage of the Interrail Pass wasn’t the fixed rate, however. It was the flexibility. I experienced multiple train delays that caused me to miss connections in Sweden and Germany, but none of them resulted in getting stranded, as my Interrail pass allowed me to just hop on the next train.
Step 5: Prepare for a long, slow journey
If you decide to travel without flying, you’re going to have a lot of hours to fill so think about what you’re going to do on the road. Personally, I can’t do any serious reading or writing on the train, however I can mark essays, so I save them up if I can. Otherwise I read interesting but less essential papers, or I digitise and organise my notes. Bear in mind that not everywhere will have wifi or good network connection, so download or print things as needed.
Alternatively, sit back and enjoy the ride. Sometimes being shaken out of our working habits is a good reminder that there’s more to life than productivity.
Final step: Make the most of it
Traveling by train, and in my case by ferry as well, usually involves arriving at and departing from the hearts of cities, rather than somewhere outside of them as is the case with air travel. This means you can do a little bit of exploring during even the shortest of layovers. I spent a two-hour layover in Cologne visiting the cathedral. Even half an hour was enough for me to nip into supermarkets abroad, just to have a look around and look for foreign words that sound funny in English (My favourite is probably the Finnish word for ‘bag’. I’ll leave you to look that one up yourself.). You can really see a lot in those little pockets of time you have between legs of your trip, and I recommend really taking advantage of this.
How I Halved my Emissions Through Sustainable Travel
This all still might sound like a pain to arrange, but here’s the real kicker: my whole journey generated less than half of the emissions than a trip to one of these two conferences would have done if I had chosen to fly. As a Grantham Scholar, I’m fortunate to have someone else to crunch the numbers for me, and Stuart from the Grantham Centre's Sustainability Assessment Team calculated the approximate emissions. These were his findings:
In total, I travelled a whopping 6580.1km on this trip. The total amount of carbon dioxide emitted from this trip was 200kgCO2e. This was 5604.1km by train, which produced 193.8kgCO2e. I also travelled by ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki twice, over a total distance of 976km, producing a total of 6.2kgCO2e. These numbers sound big, but by comparison, if I had travelled to the conference in Lahti by plane from Manchester (including trains to and from the airport on either side), this would have produced 513.5kgCO2e. That’s more than double the emissions of my entire trip! The flight alone would have produced 243.5kgCO2e, which is still more than my entire trip!
Deciding to take this journey without flying inspired me to do more than I would have done had I just gotten on a plane to Lahti, and I was able to do it all for half the emissions. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to take this trip, and I hope my experiences can help you on your journey to becoming an environmentally conscious traveller too.
Author: Anne Thompson