| What does adventure mean? For lots of people, it means going to somewhere far flung, in a remote corner of the world – the further the better. Almost always that would involve getting on a plane.
I quit flying back in 2009, and since then I’ve tried to show to myself and others that adventure doesn’t have to involve air travel. In fact, the most adventurous journeys work better without it. And while that means my adventures are unlikely to involve the Amazon rainforest, or the peaks of the Himalaya, or the Australian outback, I’m OK with that. The adventures I find are no less exciting for being close to home – in many cases, they are more so.
I’m someone that has always been conscious of reducing my emissions in every possible area, but air travel is the big one. It’s not only the emissions, which are extremely high (one return flight to the far side of the Mediterranean would wipe out all the carbon savings I’ve made from being vegan for a whole year), it’s the way air travel represents the injustice of the climate crisis.
It’s well known that those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are suffering the most, and that’s becoming harder to ignore: only 5% of the world’s population has ever been on a plane, yet every year, more and more communities are suffering and dying from climate-induced droughts, floods, wildfires and famine.
In that context, we should question very carefully whether it’s appropriate to be flying for leisure.
It is a huge privilege to be able to take a flight, yet those of us who are ‘rich’ (in global terms) do it without much thought. Perhaps a sense of entitlement? That’s why I set up Flight Free UK, to disrupt this narrative and demonstrate that there are plenty of people out there who are discovering a lifetime of adventure on our doorstep.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be our doorstep! It’s possible to travel really, really far without flying, if you have the time.
That’s my purpose: travelling to satisfy my own wanderlust, at the same time as demonstrating to others that flight-free travel is really important (as well as being brilliant).
Some of my favourite adventures include:
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- a train journey to Copenhagen where the train went onto a ferry(!) to cross from Germany to Denmark. Mind officially blown! The train no longer takes this route, but there is one place left in Europe where the train still goes onto a ferry, and that’s to cross the strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily.
- a high speed train ride from Paris to Lyon, where I arrived to find my friend had flown to save money – but had ended up spending over £100 to my £85 (planes are NOT that cheap once you’ve added all the extras, transfers etc!)
- journeying alongside Lake Geneva on the way to the Swiss Alps in winter – all intentions of reading/working went out of the window as it was impossible not to look at the view!
- arriving at the Mediterranean in Nice having cycled the length of France, and having a nice warm refreshing swim
- returning from Nice with my bike safely stashed on the train, and seeing my 10-day cycle roll itself back up out of the window.
- cycling over the Alpine pass of Mont-Cenis from France into Italy and finding a vast glacial lake at the top, before thundering down the other side into an instantly Italian village for an Italian coffee
- taking a small barge the length of the inland waterways in the Netherlands from Amsterdam to Maastricht, and playing with the big boys on the Amsterdam-Rhine canal
I could write that list again just picking out parts of the UK.
My first big adventure was cycling around the coast of Britain. As well as avoiding a flight, my motivation came from not wanting to get to know another country when I knew so little about my own.
I wondered if I could have a true travel experience without really going very far at all. The answer, after 10 weeks on the road and 4,000 miles under my wheels, was an undeniable “yes”. [Anna’s book: Eat, Sleep, Cycle: A Bike Ride Around the Coast of Britain.]
It’s a cliche, but adventure is what you make of it, not how far you go.
I hope and wish for more people to learn that it’s possible to discover the world without harming it, and that it’s incumbent on us to do so.
We will only preserve the travel of the future if we do it differently now. It doesn’t have to be a sacrifice – there’s a whole world of adventure right at our fingertips.
- Learn more about Flight Free UK here.
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