Yes, flying would have cost less in time and money, but the train trip to Tangier via Paris, Barcelona and Madrid leaves this traveller richer in many other ways
’m somewhere south of Paris when it occurs to me that, had I flown, I would be there by now. At the far end of the carriage, I can see the train speedometer touch 300kmph then settle at 296, a pace that, before the invention of the jet engine, would have left most civil aeroplanes for dead. The most advanced Belfast-built flying boats, beloved of Imperial Airways before the second world war, cruised to South Africa at lesser speeds.
The reason I am doing this is because it is better for the environment, but that impressive speed triggers some anxiety. How can this be so much better? Perhaps there is also a lingering doubt, a relic of the I am enjoying something flying can never provide: the subtle changes in landscape, the slow goodbye to wheat and potato fields, the arrival of citrus and palm
Perhaps the effects of not flying on your wellbeing might help to justify the price. The plane sells the dream of getting there faster, but do you really want to deal with the queues, the chaos, the delays, the steady thump of the child in the row behind kicking your seat, and the man with the permanent frown who wants to watch the Predator films without headphones. Avoiding all this is surely worth the extra cost of the train, I think as we pull into Barcelona.
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