Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Trains vs Planes!

It probably wouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I tend to prefer tootling along in a train to twanging myself around by plane. The laidback pleasure of a good trans-continental trundle is infinitely preferable to a sweaty-palmed bunny-hop courtesy of Michael O'Leary. Yet it's a constant source of severe irritation, like itching powder on your gusset, that the pricing difference between planes and trains is so cock-eyed.

It is absolutely ludicrous that it's possible to fly across the UK far, far cheaper than it is to hop on a train. Why is this? Well, there's no doubt trains are over-priced, especially if you have to travel last minute...something ticketing regimes actively seek to punish, it's so so naughty. I was shocked to discover that on the continent most countries have flat ticket fares that don't fluctuate in price like an epileptic metronome depending on how far in advance you buy them. No! You pay the same whether you book ten years or ten minutes ahead. British ambush pricing be damned!

But this aside, the main reason flights are cheaper than train journeys is all the subsidy that airlines receive, for 'regeneration' of regional airports, incentives to attract them to offer new routes, the lack of aviation fuel tax to name but a few...and it is these benefits that allow them to undercut trains.

If we levelled the playing field, as they have done in Spain, by offering cheap, reliable and fast train alternatives to flying between places like Madrid and Barcelona then passengers vote with their feet...and get on the rails (as 400,000 did last year as quoted in this article). Unfortunately this needs Government intervention, either to hypothecate a tax on short haul aviation to subsidise rail travel or just to simply remove the perverse subsidies that benefit far more carbon intensive air travel.

Anyway, before I rant my arse off here's a great campaign to sign up to from the Campaign for Better Transport and a fun little video that shows how unfair this all is...

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

Fishy damnation...


Some readers of this blog may remember my trip to the infamous Tokyo fish market a year or two ago, which given my background and original training as a marine biologist was nothing short of deeply shocking and somewhat mind-boggling. I blogged about it here in a post called "Fishy hangover cures and eternal damnation"

I was reminded of my encounter with the frozen tuna in the context of the film 'End of the Line' inspired by UK environment journalist Charles Clover's excellent and terrifying book of the same name. It's out in cinema's next week and looks to be yet another sobering reminder of the impact of so many rapacious hungry human mouths on the planet. It would be a true tragedy if we were to destroy beasts as magnificent as the bluefin tuna, just so we can put them on our plates...

Go and see the film, think twice about which seafood you eat and to whet your creative appetite and sate your piscivirous one watch the film's trailer below...

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Comment is free...


I wrote a piece for the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' page yesterday in my role as a Patron of the 'Slow Down London Festival' which I have mentioned previously here. If your last quiet moment to yourself was a bowel movement maybe you too ought to think about slowing down?! Here's what I wrote...

Ever found yourself tutting with dramatically impatient exasperation when the tube countdown display says "Next train four minutes"? Caught yourself grinding your teeth in fury at the snail-like walking pace of the elderly lady tottering along the pavement in front of you? Overheard yourself saying to mates "I haven't stopped/had a minute to spare/even been able to think about it I've been so busy, busy busy"? If your last quiet moment to yourself was a bowel movement, maybe a change of lifestyle pace may not be such a bad idea?

We live in an age where we're increasingly paranoid about being offline, practically twittering our partner's sexual performance "live" to an unsuspecting world. We hurtle from bed to desk to bar and bed again, wolfing sarnies on the hoof, conducting our social lives by text and bemoaning every perceived wasted minute spent waiting for someone or something that has temporarily distracted us from our relentless pursuit of … what? A meaning derived primarily from the fact we haven't an instant to even question the meaning of it all? A sense of fulfilment fuelled by frantic freneticism? An insecurity that idleness equals unimportance? We don't just have no time to stop and stare, we have no time to stop full stop.

Slow down London. Is it a festival or a well-intentioned suggestion? Well, it's both. Over the next 10 days or so, a sensuous smorgasbord of seductively slow events and activities seeks to explore the rewards we might reap from decelerating our wham, bam, thank you ma'am existence a little. Whether it's taking a leisurely stroll through familiar streets at a different pace to reveal new perspectives, sinking your teeth into something succulent and seasonal or enjoying a philosophical excursion into the nature of time and how we value it, we all have something to potentially gain from taking our foot off the pedal.

A life without reflection is like eating a meal without tasting it. Goals might be achieved, stomachs are filled but the opportunity to savour is sadly squandered. This is the way my old family dog used to consume its dinner. A mongrel beagle from the RSPCA, the poor beast had obviously been fed erratically so every morsel put in front of it was not so much eaten as inhaled almost instantly. The craven canine never learned how to enjoy a meal properly so desperate was it to seize the opportunity to eat.

If we are not careful we will end up living our lives the same way. Charging around in a perpetual state of multi-tasking madness we can all too easily miss the moments that really matter. Perhaps it's the winking on of the mental lightbulb with a cunningly creative idea during a stolen chunk of quiet contemplation? Reconnecting with the real fundamentals of family and friends, love and laughter, looking after each other and the world around us? Or remembering why being busy can be a good thing by balancing it with a bit of languid bumbling?

Whatever works for you I suspect slowing down a tad may well make us all a bit happier, sexier, less stressed, better company and possibly even a modicum wiser. The really perverse irony is if we're in too much of a rush to even give it a try.

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Back one year...

Hard to believe but we have been home for over a year now though the memories still burn like warm fires in the soul to hearten us in any dark and difficult moments. There's also a strange circularity to the feel of London protests in the spring. Last week's G20 shenanigans have proved a reminder of the Tibet protests this time last year, as I wrote on the blog.

12 months on I'm working on the book about the trip, toiling away feverishly at Futerra and still updating this blog with other slow travels...so a huge ongoing thank you to everyone who reads me! I've had over 35,000 unique visitors to this site to date and hopefully this can continue to grow as interest in slow travel increases.

Friday, 27 March 2009

In praise of cargo ships!


The Guardian Leader this morning gives a tribute to Britain's history as a sea-faring nation and the value that marine shipping still brings to the UK. I couldn't agree more! As a huge fan of cargo ship travel (as evidenced by my various musings on the subject here)

I've cut and pasted the full text of the Leader below, or you can read it in situ on the Guardian site here.

A glimpse of the sea that surrounds us is no more than an hour or so away, wherever you are on this island. Our language is littered with the flotsam of a nautical legacy. But as the cranes and warehouses near the centres of coastal cities gave way to riverside apartments, the nation's awareness of its dependence on the sea ebbed away like the tide. Britain no longer really thinks of itself as a maritime nation. But it still is. Downstream, and largely out of sight, at ports such as Tilbury, huge container ships and cargo vessels load exports and unload imports, day and night. These leviathans of the deep deliver enormous economies of scale - 10p to ship a bottle of whisky to Japan and 70p to ship a DVD player back the other way; shipping is also the greenest way to do it, when the alternative is flying. As North Sea fuel supplies run down, great tankers of oil and gas from the Middle East are becoming vital to keeping the lights on - last week the first tanker arrived at Milford Haven's huge new liquefied gas terminal. The recession is hitting the shipping industry hard, like everything else. But worldwide a million seafarers ply their trade across the oceans to deliver five billion tons of trade; and the British fleet has grown markedly since the government introduced a new tax regime in 2000, and is now the 9th largest in the world. Nautical colleges are getting busier too. With London still the maritime capital for insurance and the marketplace for joining up cargoes with ships, the sea is still a good little earner for Britain.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Slow Down London!

I'll be joining the Financial Times' journalist Harry Eyres (author of the 'Slow Lane' column) in conversation on the South Bank on April 29th as part of the Slow Down London festival. Tickets for this evening session that will explore the joys, challenges and arguable necessity of slower travel in our climate changing world are available via this link. (Or you can just read all about it on here!)

Sunday, 1 March 2009

New Ryanair Safety Card...

Following this announcement by Ryanair about charging for toilet use I got sent the mocked up safety card below. But it's the Daily Mash's take on this that really cracked me up!

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Age of Stupid...

Probably the scariest most inspiring film you'll ever see...

Monday, 23 February 2009

Big freeze and brown cheese...

Slow journeys never start auspiciously when you hear the heart-sinking words ‘Rail Replacement Service’. Now I’m always happy to take my time and enjoy the journey but taking no fewer than eight different connections just to get from Brixton to Harwich was testing even my, ahem, Saint like patience!

Nevertheless after this scenic tour of rural Essex by train and bus I got on the MS Dana Sirena for the overnight chug up through the North Sea to Esbjerg on the east coast of Denmark. Dubbing itself a ‘cruise-ferry’ the Dana Sirena boasted a live music nightclub bar with leather booth seats, the perhaps mercifully unfulfilled threat of live muzak, and a curious Perspex box in the corner – the smoking ‘cabin’. Since the fume ban this now means tobacco-wizened truckers sit in their own hazy bunker in the bar like some sort of odd zoo exhibit. ‘Species: Danishus Truckerensis, Common Name: Hairy-arse Lorry Driver. Observe these magnificently moustachoied beasts as they recreate their natural cab habitat in our specially contained chamber’.

The female Danish staff on the ferry all seemed to share either the same Solarium membership or brand of foundation make-up. Judging by appearances I suspected this might be called ‘Sunset Orange’, their glowing complexions adding some much needed colour to an otherwise dull, grey, foggy crossing.

The weather was claustrophobically misty on arrival in Esbjerg, lending the town, sorry city (Denmark’s fifth largest as all the local tourist literature kept reminding me – but after Copenhagen I think there's quite a steep drop-off), a slightly creepy, Stephen King novel type air. I wasn’t stopping though and took a series of trains towards Hirtshals and the ferry to Norway.

We trundled through a brown, agricultural landscape which became increasingly snowy the further north we went. Ominous looking pig and chicken sheds lurked amongst the fields housing Danish intensive pork and poultry concentration camps (i.e. farms) and huge sculptural Vestas wind turbines loomed out of the damp, murky miasma. By the time we reached Hirtshals the snow was thick and powdery on the ground as I trudged to the port terminal for the fast ferry to Kristiansand.

The weather was kind and the crossing as smooth as the North Sea had been as we sped across the mouth of the Baltic, arriving in a harbour full of ‘pancake’ ice and under a flurry of fresh snowfall around midnight. As one of the very few foot passengers aboard I was left to wander the pretty, pristine white streets of town alone in search of my hotel, and after 36 hours of slow travel fun I was certainly ready to get my head down. On the bed I was amused to see a flyer from the hotel asking ‘Do you need a kick in the rear?’ After my long journey this wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but thankfully it went on to explain that ‘we are not overly keen on actually kicking our guest’ (Phew!). They simply wanted to make a few suggestions for getting out and about locally rather than offering some niche S&M arse-kicking room service.

I spent the next couple of days hanging out with the gang from Dale+Bang the agency that had invited me over to participate in a series of workshops on sustainability communication (in Norwegian...you can read about these on the Futerra blog here). They looked after me splendidly, putting me up in a gorgeous hotel room with incredible views over the frozen waters of the bay in Arendal, where houses huddled and hunched along the shoreline under a dense blanket of heavy snow. I ate heartily on elk, a splendid curry (all the way to Norway for a taste of Mother India!) and the strange, traditional brown goat's cheese that is almost toffee-like...

Norway is one of those shamelessly bilingual nations where even apologizing and asking ‘Do you speak English?’ is seen as being mildly insulting (as Eddie Izzard once noted in Amsterdam this is like enquiring in a patronizing fashion whether they can count to three such is their grasp of our estuarine lingo). Norwegian itself is rather magical and musical. ‘An English friend of mine says it’s like listening to the language of the little, forest people’ noted Karen one of my hosts mischievously.

We worked hard and played hard, grafting away all day and venturing out into the icy streets at night for dinner and drinks. Maybe it’s something to do with the long, dark winter evenings (it almost certainly is) but I was reminded of living in Orkney where on any given night of the week the pub was invariably full of raucous, drunken men. In Kristiansand it seemed they were all keen to practice their English swearing, using ‘Fuck you!’ as a form of affectionate, inebriated greeting (at least that was my charitable interpretation – maybe they meant it!). One shaven-headed drunk in particular took a shine to us…well, he kept swearing as us with a grin on his face anyway. At around 2am as I wove my way home with a beery grin on my chops I passed him again in the street so smiled and waved to which he mechanically gave me the finger and carried on walking. I laughed to myself all the way back to the hotel.

On my last night we convened at the Dale+Bang office to tackle the two highly-prized bottles of Highland Park whisky I’d brought as a gift (Norwegian booze is ball-achingly expensive and spirits only sold through Government shops). Five of us managed to polish off both – myself, Arne, Svein and Kristian from Dale+Bang plus Ivan an old friend of theirs and potential client who was opening a factory in eastern Germany to make solar glass. As the whisky flowed and the chat lurched back and forth from English to Norwegian (which I almost believed I understood at one point) Ivan became increasingly animated reciting Monty Python sketches in boisterous fashion. His favourite clearly the sex education lesson from ‘The Meaning of Life’. ‘I am now mounting my wife!’ he kept exclaiming loudly and repeatedly with eye-popping, red-faced enthusiasm.

Ah, Norway. Happy times and I was sad to set off on the long slow, journey home.

Thursday, 12 February 2009

How low can you go?

Integrity. Funny thing integrity. Good old Wikipedia describes it as a 'consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles. Integrity may be seen as the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one's actions'.

The problem is, if you compromise your integrity you enter the realms of hypocrisy, and once you've lost integrity, that's it, it's gone forever. I like to think of this as the Bill Hicks rule, following on from his famously acerbic challenge to marketeers 'Kill yourselves'! Not wanting to compromise my own integrity and end up, as Bill so eloquently described, 'sucking Satan's scaly cock' (nice), I've always ignored the constant requests I receive from web-advertisers to place paid links on this blog. This is also because they usually want to advertise cheap flights! I mean really, no sense of irony...

But, recently intrigued by one particular request, and having discussed the dubious nature of paid, placed ads with one of mates at work, I followed up on one, just to see where it would go. 'What's the harm in a discretely placed ad for a mobile phone?' you may think...well, here's the evidence below! It's not just a link, they want you to be their bitch, lie through your own arse and endorse a product you don't even have! Outrageous! Check out the 'seamless' suggested insertion of a new second paragraph below and compare it with my usual writing style for starters! So sorry Claire...if you're reading this, which you probably are, the answer is 'no thanks'. This site will remain ad-free and I'll keep my integrity, and the trust of my readers, intact ta very much.

Email from Claire at www.linkstar.co.uk

Hi Ed!

Our client is O2, UK's leading provider in mobile and broadband needs, and below are the details needed to put the link up:

I'd like the text-link advertisement on the following internal page of your site:
http://www.lowcarbontravel.com/2008/02/sunny-san-salvador.html

Anchor Text: mobile broadband

Anchor Text URL: http://broadband.o2.co.uk/mobile

Location: New Second Paragraph

New Second Paragraph:
'The photo on the right side was taken with the mobile broadband phone I had purchased, which was equipped with a 5-megapixel camera. Thank God I didn't have to bring an SLR camera which I was seriously considering. After having seen the gritty side of El Salvador which I enjoyed very much, a camera phone that takes quality pictures is good enough!'


I've contributed a new paragraph to your article (it was a delightful read by the way) so that the two-word text link can blend naturally (!?) into your web page and not look inorganically inserted. I believe this will benefit the visitors of your site =) Please let me know when the link is up and running so that I could make the payment asap.

Also, if you have other sites where we could purchase links, please do let me know. I'm sure an experienced webmaster such as yourself definitely has several quality sites that can match our clients' needs =)

Thanks so much, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers!
Claire =)


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