Go by car Rattle - as AE says, pootle down through France and treat it as part of the holiday. Plenty of cheap "chain" hotels and literally thousands of Chambres d'Hotes (B&Bs) and Logis de France
www.logis-de-france.fr/uk/recherch/index-ca.htm which can be remarkably good value.
Don't stick to motorways - tolls can prove expensive (viaMichelin allows you to plan route and gives toll charges) and D and N roads can be just as quick - you will be surprised how quiet they can be compared to UK.
As for breakdowns, I guess you will do 2500 miles ish? Would you expect your car to break down in Britain every 2500 miles? Thought not.
As for ferry or chunnel - whichever you prefer but you could use Tesco vouchers on chunnel (each pound Tesco voucher is worth £4 on chunnel) - we got our crossing "free" this summer.
Enjoy
Phil
PS Altea Ego - Spain does have a west coast - look at Vigo on a map - (or even Cadiz?)
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I am not going the trip dosn't exist :) It was purely a question of out interest as we are always been told not to use our cars or planes.
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I regularly drive from Suffolk to Bordeaux in various old and very cheap Citroens and last year, in a 602cc Citroen Acadiane. I love it, always great fun and I've never had a breakdown. Do it Rattle!
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"I am not going the trip dosn't exist :) "
OK - so why worry about CO2 emissions? Your little trip to Barcelona will make no difference.
If it was that important why would 20,000 delegates from all over the world FLY to Copenhagen to discuss...........................................
climate change and how to reduce CO2 emissions???????
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Because I find this kind of debate quite interesting :). I suppose my real question was how much worse are planes or cars for the environment for the same journey. Barcelona just seemed like an obvious destination Paris might have been a better one.
I am guessing planes use a lot more fuel during take off and also a bit more when landing due to flying at a lower altitude so longer distances on one tank of fuel must be more efficient than shorter ones?
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why would anyone even consider this?
A VERY LONG road journey instead of a quick flight, probably from your local airport.
The planes will be flying anyway ( last time I checked flying was still allowed in Europe) so use them.This sort if attitude will allow the green idiots more room for control of our lives. I for one have had enough of their nonsense and ignore their petulant ill founded lightweight theories on climate change.
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The planes are only flying due to demand, if less people used them there would be less flights.
Maybe Barcelona is not a fair example as it is quite a long away away but this is why I won't fly.
1) You have to get to the airport, its a long way (well 8 miles and £15 in a taxi) but when you get there its a big maze.
2) Finally find the destination and check in
3) Wait for hours for the delays
4) Get on plane, through up on a few scouse flight attedants, through up on the big scottish bloke next to you.
5) Land, throw up some more, suffer the rest of the day with severe ear pain.
6) Get to the airport and realise you're in fact 60 miles away from the destination and the trains run every 6 hours.
or car
1) Drive in a nice luxery environment picking up speedining tickets on the way
2) Stop of in some lovely villages, meet some lovely French people, eat some exostic frogs and other local food (in my case McDonalds).
3) A few hours later arrive 400 miles to final desternation - repeat steps one and two.
I've been all the way from Berlin purely by train and loved every minute of it, it took me about 8 hours longer than flying but I stopped of at Amsterdam and Paris on the way.
I think for me half the fun of a holiday is the adventure getting on a plain and then getting picked up by some package holiday company just seems no fun.
This thread was purely about the science and was not supposed to be a green debate. I am concerned about climate change but I am not convinced that is purely down to the burning of fossil fuels.
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>>we are always been told not to use our cars or planes.
Rattle, don't fall into the trap of believing all that the green extremists say. The climate has always changed and always will. Good excuse for taxation though!
Edited by Old Navy on 09/11/2009 at 21:14
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That`s right Rattle. Head South for adventures before you become a fossil - and it`s a glacier moving you towards Barcelona at 3 feet a month... ;-)
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"we are always been told not to use our cars or planes"
Especially by people who use limos to travel a few hundred yards to House of Commons or travel the world by plane to lecture us on the evils of air travel - take no notice of them!
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I posted this on here nearly three years ago:
I reckon a 747 uses on average 2000 gallons an hour ( that is about 8.5 gals per min per engine ), so on a 3600 mile trip with 400 passengers that takes 8 hours:
8 hours x 2000 gallons = 16,000 gallons
3600 miles x 400 passengers = 1,440,000 passenger miles
1,440,000 / 16,000 = 90 mpg per passenger or about equal to a 2 ltr TD two-up.
So a longhaul Boeing 747-400 will do around 90 mpg per passenger, short haul 737s etc will be around half of that due to the larger proportion of the total flight that is taxying, take off and climb-to-height.
So take a family of four going on hols, they are combined doing around 22mpg on a long haul flight which perhaps compares well with four up in a large petrol car though the problem is that they will do a 7000 miles plus just going to east coast USA and back for a weekend.
Although a shorthaul 737 does only around 35 to 45mpg per passenger, it makes shorthaul business air travel fairly competitive with single occupancy cars though if the car carries more than one passenger it wins easily.
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A fully laden Airbus A380 will use less than 3l/100km according to Airbus tinyurl.com/yc2t6mc - a consumption that would seem to fall in line with what we record for our Trent 900 engines on that compared to other earlier Trents.
For reference a Boeing 747 with 4* RB211s will use 5 tons more Kerosene crossing the Atlantic than a Boeing 777 with 2* Trent 800s on board... the signs of progress.
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cjehuk, your reference to our Trent 900 engine suggests you work for RR? I know someone who used to work at RR in aero-engines design etc. Interesting stuff all this.
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rtj70, yes indeed I do work for RR in Operations Management - lots of cutting edge technology being pushed as far as it will go! Fascinating industry to be in and you sometimes forget just how clever some of what we do is.
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Some flights only leave Heathrow to protect landing and take-off slots. They would do this empty if need be. But CO 2 is not the only greenhouse gas.
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"we are always been told not to use our cars or planes" Especially by people who use limos to travel a few hundred yards to House of Commons or travel the world by plane to lecture us on the evils of air travel - take no notice of them!
Beautifully put, PhilW.
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The climate has always changed and always will. >>
Old Navy - written just for you:
www.grist.org/article/climate-is-always-changing/
www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice...m
www.skepticalscience.com/1500-year-natural-cycle.h...m
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At least cars don`t have to dump fuel..
Years ago I was flying out of Kuala Lumpur and had only just taken off when a passenger became ill. An announcement came on that we would be returning and dumping fuel. Fuel then spurted out of the wing tips - as though out of a fire engines hoses.
We never got more than a thousand feet up and you could see trees below being totally hosed by jet fuel. This seemed to go on for at least ten minutes and you were left with the impression that onboard a flying fuel tank.
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Old Navy - written just for you:
I admit I have not read the references word for word, but I have been around long enough to suspect vested interests and taxtakers in the background of things "green".
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Of course if I had won teh Euro jackpot last week I would ask 'Which would produce less CO2, going to Spain in my Sea Furey or in my GT40 Continuation?'.
Seriously though, I don't understand why anyone would take an internal flight like London to Manchester. By the time you get to the airport, get through security, board, actually fly, disembark, get thriugh the airport and finaly get into town the train must be faster.
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Last time I did it I left my house in South Manchester, three hours later I was in Knightsbridge. To get to my train station it was a 20 minute bus ride and a 10 minute walk (for those that know Manc I get of the bus on Oxford Road and cut through, its a longer walk but cuts all the traffic out)
I could have got the plane, on public transport it would have taken me an hour to get to the aiport, then another hour to check in, 30 minutes on the plane only to be dumped in a place 30 miles from London and wait another half an hour for luggage. Even the coach probably isn't a lot slower than the plane for such local trips.
Left 45 mins early for the train, train left at 11:50 (I think) and arrived at Euston for 13:48.
It is usualy quicker than the advertised time as they allow 5 minutes in their time table for delays.
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I used to regularly drive North London to South Manchester usually on a Friday evening. It would take anything from 4 to 7 hours or longer (if Friday fell on Christmas Eve). Much easier to visit my folks now I'm in Warsaw, door to door in about three and a half hours and for only a few dollars more. Stress-free and with a couple of drinky-poos if I feel like it.
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jbif - Have you seen the products in one of your references?
I think the Eco shop says it all - Eco friendly dog deodoriser, and Eco friendly Ladies knickers? Amongst many more irrelevant profit makers.
Edited by Old Navy on 10/11/2009 at 11:22
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I thought we had established already that dogs are non-eco friendly themselves? Surely adding any kind of deodoriser makes a bad situation worse? Who are these people trying to fool? Faithful Believers of the Ultimate Truth will not be easily impressed.
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Rattle, you might be surprised how green flying can be. Modern aircraft operated by the low cost carriers like Ryanair, Flybe and Easyjet have a very low fuel burn per seat, because they put the maximum number of seats into the aircraft and then try and fill as many of them as possible. Even on a UK domestic trip, with 2 people sharing a typical hatchback car, a modern fast turboprop if full, will have a similar fuel burn of around 4.5 gallons per passenger for a typical 400 mile trip (i.e. 9 galls for the car trip if 2 sharing). If a traveller chose to drive on his own to appease the anti-flying lobby, he would likely emit more CO2 than if he had flown. The gap between diesel trains and aircraft is now less than it was. Electric long distance rail is still the greenest option, but then many treehuggers are anti-nuclear, so if the wind isnt blowing for the turbines then some coal or gas needs to be burned for that too!
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Indeed most my rail travel is by electric (Pendolino and Class 323) but sadly do I also have to use the not to green sprinters and 142s.
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Have you seen the products in one of your references? >>
Old Navy:
Never seen any ads in any websites on any of the browsers on any of my computers!
However it seems you are against profit makers. Reinstate the Berlin Wall and communism!
Edited by jbif on 10/11/2009 at 11:50
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However it seems you are against profit makers. >>
Not against profit, I repeat, vested interests and tax takers.
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The principle problem with rail travel in the UK is its exorbitant cost.
It is the source of much amusement among my Dutch colleagues at how we get ripped off in this country for rail travel. One of these colleagues lives and works in Amsterdam, but occasionally has to travel to Venlo, near the German border to visit a team for which he has some responsibility. This journey is almost always at peak time, and represents a distance of approximately 115 miles each way.
He pays ?38 return on the train, with a 40% discount available if he can travel outside of peak hours. A similar distance return journey (say London to Nottingham) by train in the UK weighs in at £130 if you can't travel off peak.
I actually enjoy travelling by train, but it is unaffordable. On a recent business trip to Edinburgh, the train came in at £270 return, (I needed to travel at peak time). EasyJet flew me there and back for £150. Even with car parking, fuel cost to/from the airport and taxi to/from the airport at the other end, it was an easy £60 odd saving.
Edited by DP on 10/11/2009 at 13:48
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DP you might just need to learn the tricks of the trade. I never pay any more than £20 for a single train ticket to London from Manchester yet tickets of well over £200 exist.
Local trains I have a problem with, my friend lives in Ashton and works in Warrington she wants to get the train instead of driving as its a horrible journey but the train comes in at over £11 because she is traveling in rush hour. Petrol is about £5.
Edited by Rattle on 10/11/2009 at 13:56
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Not against profit, I repeat, vested interests and tax takers. >>
Your words "profit makers", not mine. See your post timed at Tue 10 Nov 09 11:20
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My apology, I was referring to what I would call vested interests, People who have staked their reputation, income, or funding on things Eco or green. But I believe that many people profit from green scaremongering.
Edited by Old Navy on 10/11/2009 at 14:09
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depends how full the plane is and how full the car is
lying stats currently generally compare a full plane or train with a single user car
many trains and planes run near empty
etc
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I read somewhere that a 747 on cruise does about 3.5 mpg. Carrying 400 people that's pretty impressive, the problem is that it's going 4000 miles at a time, so it still guzzles masses of oil.
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the problem is that it's going 4000 miles at a time, so it still guzzles masses of oil.
Yup. Shanks's pony from now on. That way peak oil will never come. And people's legs will get even thicker.
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I'm doing my bit, I'd not flown for several, err, weeks. Until today. Ahem. And I may have another 5 or 6 flights booked for the next 3 weeks.
Not looking good really.
On the bright side, my car mileage has dropped through the floor recently. I'm forever on the train to London or the plane to Germany. Ah well.
Edited by Gordon M on 10/11/2009 at 20:51
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