London to Denmark: planes, trains and... environmentally friendly travel

Three cups of Fairtrade coffee, around 800 miles on a train, 39 hours of 'me-time' in a train seat, seven hours in Cologne, four hours in Brussels, a free copy of The Economist and a good, green conscience. These are just the highlights of what I got for my £250 when I took the train(s) from London to Denmark and back this Christmas.

Having thoroughly enjoyed my trip to Paris on the Eurostar in November, I decided to buff up my green travel CV -- and have a bit of an adventure -- by taking the train all the way from London to Southern Denmark to visit my family for Christmas. What at first seemed like the greatest eco idea since the Wattson turned out be a slightly stressful and lengthy experience.

First, there was the ticket-booking malarkey. While booking a Ryanair ticket or even a ferry ticket takes around 15 minutes from the idea entering our heads to the confirmation email sitting in our inbox, booking a train ticket from London St Pancras to Kolding in Denmark took me about five hours trawling the net like mad for a website where I could check times, prices and eventually buy my return ticket. No such site exists (Eurostar plans to create one by 2009). Flabbergasted that in this day and age of green travelling and CO2-cutting epidemics, there isn't a single website offering a European version of nationalrail.co.uk, I opted for the independent traveller's last resort and contacted a travel agency.

After one hour on the phone, the lovely agent could only tell me that not many people take the train from London to Denmark (no surprises there) and it would not be possible for me to book the whole journey with them. Now 100 per cent determined to take the train, I continued my search and with some help from Deutsche Banhn's incredible website (which let me find exact timetables -- but unfortunately couldn't give me a price), and a very friendly agent at DB's UK Booking Centre, I managed to get hold of a return ticket from Cologne to Kolding. I discovered Deutsche Bahn through the very useful Euro rail encyclopedia, The Man in Seat Sixty-One.

Now I just needed the London to Cologne return ticket. An extremely helpful Rail Europe employee sorted that out for me. Not exactly easy peasy, but once I overcame my phobia of travel agencies, it wasn't too bad. Rail Europe does have a very good website and if you're not going to somewhere strange in Europe -- such as Denmark -- it's more than likely the agents there can find your entire journey for you.

At £250, which my two return tickets came to in total, it wasn't more expensive than flying with Ryanair or taking the ferry considering it was Christmas time. Adding to that, due to no availability in Standard Class on Eurostar, I travelled First Class both to and from Brussels (which I can highly recommend if the price between Standard and First Class isn't too big when you want to travel).

Throughout what had become quite a journey before I even set off, I had to keep reminding myself how much more eco-friendly I was being by taking the train rather than flying. According to Ecolane consultancy's Travel Footprint website, my journey to Denmark by train was only half as bad for the environment as if I'd travelled by air. The site's intended for UK journeys and therefore doesn't take the electric Eurostar and French trains into account, but I spoke to Ben Lane, who developed Travel Footprint, and he assured me the environmental impact (combining the climate change impact and the air quality impact) of my train journey was at least 50 per cent less than that of the alternative short-haul flight (see illustration below).

If ever there was an epic journey, mine was it. The outward leg was pretty stressful, as I only had 20 minutes between each of my four train changes with the result that I missed one and had to find an alternative journey from Hamburg. Despite this, I was impressed that all-told it only took 15 hours -- mishaps included.

The way back, on the other hand, was lovely -- albeit 24-hours long. I took a night-train from Denmark and only had to change twice, in Cologne and Brussels. I also had six hours in Cologne due to limited availability on the Brussels trains, which I spent visiting the famous Dome of Cologne and a chocolate museum (which could have had a little less information about Lindt and a little more information about organic and Fairtrade chocolate, in my opinion).

On both legs I really enjoyed looking out at the different countries' landscapes -- especially on the outward journey where Belgium and Germany were covered in clean, crisp and extremely Christmassy frost.

It's understandable why people -- even us greenies -- wouldn't want to go through two travel agencies, pay the same or more as they would for a flight and sit on a train seat for 39 hours to cut their carbon footprint. But I'd still do it again. Now I know how it all works, it can only get easier. Besides, going through Europe's beautiful countryside at high speed and the immense pleasure of getting to your destination knowing you've got there at a smaller cost to the environment is well worth it. And since when was it enjoyable hanging out at Stansted Airport for hours anyway?

Other facts:

* London to Cologne return journey starts at £93 with Rail Europe, 08448 484 064
* Deutsche Bahn's UK Booking office can help you with journeys to or via Germany,  08718 80 80 66
* The coffee and tea served on the Eurostar is Fairtrade
* You can get organic soft drinks at the Ludwig Museum Café next to the train station in Cologne
* They have public recycling bins at the German train stations

Travel Footprint's Environmental Impact Score System:

Related Links

• SmartPlanet