Get back on track
Written: 9th June, 2008
There's never been a better time to travel by train. The sky-high price of oil means that airlines are being forced to add massive premiums on top of the prices of tickets — BA announced last week that it was going to stick an extra £32 on all flights to cover higher fuel costs.
The years of cheap flights are well and truly over, at least until the oil price falls again, which doesn’t look likely any time soon. The fuel price has already meant curtains for a number of the high-profile business-only airlines, and Ryanair has said that it will ground 10 per cent of its fleet over the winter to save cash.
Flying is becoming prohibitively expensive, and that’s before you take into account the cost of holidays: cash-strapped families are unlikely to be voyaging to distant, exotic places for their fix of foreign travel this year. European hols are expected to get a boost this summer.
Travelling by train is a far more civilised affair, as anybody who has ever spent time waiting for a delayed flight at Gatwick will tell you. They are quick, you get a great view, you can walk about freely and — in Europe at least — they are almost always on time.
The trains from the St Pancras Eurostar terminal get you to Paris in a couple of hours, from where you can take a connection to places south. Brussels is the jumping-off place for all points east. True, it takes a little longer by train, but it costs less and you can leave St Pancras at lunchtime, spend the afternoon reading your book and watching the countryside whiz by, then have a sleep on the train and wake up in Florence the next morning in time for a caffe corretto and a dose of Michelangelo.
By that time, London — and all those screaming kids in the airport — will be a distant memory.
Source City AM