The conundrums of a sustainable traveller

In my very first post I said the following with regard to avoiding aircraft:


"I'm leaving Melbourne ... the general intent is to make it back to Australia in 6-12 months without flying (ok - maybe just one flight from Singapore) .... The themes I am hoping to capture in this 'journal' are sustainability (particularly energy related initiatives I'm hoping to visit), fantastic passionate people and various travel insights that come from avoiding aircraft".

I would like to share four very obvious insights and a hypothetical that come from avoiding aircraft and then I will go on to explain our conundrum more personally.

• It is ridiculously cheap to fly


• It is ridiculously expensive to take the train


• Some parts of the EU don't see sunlight for the better part of a year (think UK)


• Some parts of the EU have sunlight for much of the year (think Spain)

Now for a hypothetical. Let's say Ms Piccadilly is fed up with the grey days of London so she decides to go to Barcelona for a week in February. Here are her options:

1. Bus- Route, Eurolines London to Barcelona. Time, 27 hours there and 23 hours back. Cost, £137. Carbon, 34.1 kg


2. Train- Route, Eurostar London to Paris then change trains to Barcelona. Time, 20 hours there and 20 hours back. Cost, £200. Carbon, 65.6 kg


3. Aeroplane- Route, London to Barcelona. Time, 3 hours there and 1.5 hours back. Cost, £40 without luggage and £58 with luggage. Carbon, 194.3 kg

I'd say Ms Piccadilly is in a picaninny of a pickle.

What should she choose if she wants to travel sustainably? The bus right. But Ms Piccadilly is on a budget and only has a week off work. The £60 odd saved is one or two nights accommodation in Barcelona and the 45.5 hours she saves means an extra two days of sunshine, rest and relaxation. If you have ever lived in the UK you know how rejuvenating this can be.

This is a real conundrum because for most travellers it costs to care about carbon and for millions of people flying away to get away is now the norm.

Moz and I are six months into our travels. We spent three months taking a train around Europe and it was very lucky that we had pre-purchased Eurorail tickets because the trains are super expensive - certainly more so than aeroplanes. We then purchased a diesel van called Vincent Van-Go and have been travelling around it in the UK to avoid the extortionate cost of rail fares and increase our ability to reach remote places.

We now find ourselves faced with an ever tightening budget and the last leg of our marvelous adventure - taking the Trans-Mongolian train across Russia and into China to fly home from Asia. Getting from the UK to Russia would be a cinch if we flew and it would save us loads of money but alas we will attempt to take buses and trains and maybe even hitch the odd lift.

I suppose my point is that from home, when planning a trip like ours, it seems easy and fun to take trains to see the world while also 'doing the right thing'. But, faced with the reality of dwindling cash supplies my commitment is seriously tested. Is it any wonder that emissions from the aviation sector are one of the fastest growing in the world.

George Monibot's blog from Copenhagen sums up my point beautifully. He took a £480 standard train fare from London to the climate talks in Copenhagen rather than an £18 flight.

** Try the UK based Transport Direct calculator to compare bus, train and aeroplane emission from your planned journey.

** These footprint calculators are one way to understand the impact of your household on the planet - WWF calculator is good for UK residents and ACF calculator is good for Aussies.


** The Man in Seat 61 will help you plan most aspects of a train journey anywhere in the world.

Dropping diesel in Wales

We stopped the other day at a public toilet next to a slate museum in the tiny Welsh town on Llanbris. We needed to empty our overflowing chemical toilet and the environmentalist in me wanted to do it into a toilet and not on the road side in Snowdonia National Park.

After chatting to the helpful man who had just cleaned the toilet block we decided to sneak our naughty little potty into the men's, out of sight of the goings on in the area. Just as we'd worked out how to proceed in this task two men, one middle aged and one young, appeared in the doorway wearing head to toe diving suits of black rubber.

They were like lake monsters but with a better sense of humour. "Oh dear, there's been a take over" they declared at seeing two women in the men's bathroom. After some fumbling apologies and a weak explanation for our pee stained potty they told us why they looked like lake monsters and wanted to know about our lovely van Vincent.

The men, Eamonn and Albi, dive at the bottom off a water logged and disused slate quarry as practice for their summer holidays in the Mediterranean. In Wales they wear three layers including an arctic layer in order to keep warm-ish.

Curiosity lead them to Vincent and a raft of questions including fuel consumption. We discussed miles and kilometres, litres and gallons. The men took a break from the van tour to get dressed and we used the opportunity to empty the little loo into the men's urinal. That is another story....

The heroes of the story decided that we should follow them in our van to the dive shack where they needed to return their equipment and they could use the computer to do some conversions. Enter another character, John, the owner of a tiny dive shack. Over the next hour of so John, a middle aged balding, chain smoking Welshman peppered the main plot line of 'working on the van' with woes of his dysfunctional computer and stories of his son and daughter-in-law in Australia. This included photos of the woman's brain surgery to remove a parasite a week after their return. By the end of our stay I managed to plant the seed in John's head that it was probably the stop off in Thailand where the parasite jumped on board.

Back to the van.... Eamonn by now had mentioned that he was a diesel mechanic... for Ford. Would you read about it!?

When Eamonn did the maths, using the dive shack computer, and discovered that Vincent the Ford Transit was getting half the efficiency of his peers all were completely committed to solving the mystery and thus began an hour long process of working by torchlight. Eamonn banged and clanged while Albi his faithful side-kick insisted on being told every twist and turn in a diesel engine. John smoked nearby.

The culprit turned out to be a fuel leak in a small rubber pipe leading into the engine. This was dripping onto the exhaust and causing the smell, which was obvious when pointed out. This was also the probably cause of our carbon monoxide alarm screeching at us as we drive.

After some man-handling (see pic right) and a slice of faithful gaffer tape the leak was fixed but there remained a disturbing noise. The last owner had fiddled with the [enter proper mechanic speak here] to compensate for the leak. This mean the van was revving high and not using oxygen but rather burning even more diesel.

Once Eamonn finished John came with a tank of compressed air (see picture below), and a cigarette in his mouth ready to light, to clean the diesel off the engine.

Now we will wait and see how fast the gauge goes down but either way I am grateful to the kindness of strangers and sorry for all the diesel we left on the roads of Wales.

Blogging and why I'm crap at it

So this blog hasn't exactly turned out the way I'd hoped. Entries for one... just aren't here are they.

Backpacking has changed a lot since I last did it. Now everyone has a mobile phone and even a mini-laptop. Alas I do not. This means finding Internet cafes and paying the sometimes extortionate cost (up to AU$9 per hour) to sit in a stuffy room and try to think what on earth about my travels would make interesting reading.

Setting this up as a sustainability focused blog was somewhat setting it up for a fall. I simply haven't had the opportunity to gain an in depth look at many sustainability related topics.

Somehow I'm finding myself a very busy little backpacker. Always somewhere to go and something to see. Go figure...

So the Scottish lassie and I have been on the road for 4 months now. We have been through Italy, France and Spain all by train and we have never been in one place for too long.

Our latest adventure sees us in Vincent Van-Go, our lovely new camper, travelling around UK and Ireland (where we are right now). For a look at the gorgeous Vincent, and an example of a high quality and dedicated blogger, see Letters from London.

So I apologise to my lovely friends and family who have been waiting to read something, anything from this page. I will try a little harder to gain some blog confidence and build up my blogger blagging skills.

recipe for multi lingual madness

Ingredients

• 2 Chinese ladies who speak dialect Chinese and moderate Italian


• 1 Spanish woman who speaks Spanish, German, some English and a little Italian


• 1 Spainish woman who speaks Spanish and a little English and Italian


• 1 Spainish man who speaks Spanish and a little English and moderate Italian


• 1 woman from Litgenstien who speaks German and a little English


• 1 woman from Australia who speaks English and very little Italian


• 1 woman from Scotland who speaks something like English and very little Italian


• 1 Frenchman who speaks French, English, Russian and a little Italian


• 1 Basque woman who speaks Basque, Spanish and a little English and Italian


• 1 dog who speaks all languages when food is being offered

Add vino ......

Add more vino .......

Add a dictionary and some playing cards ......

Result .... multi lingual madness and a whole lot of fun.

more budget travel tips for Italy

So yes... we are finding Italy quite expensive on the Aussie dollar!

Tip number 6:

Book a language course (learn Italian) in Siena, Florence or Milan with Scuola Leonardo da Vinci and they find you super cheap accommodation. Serious, it is cheaper to stay somewhere for a few weeks and go to school from 9-1pm than to be a regular tourist. And guess what, you learn pocco Italiano.

We will be in the beautiful, and car free since the 70s, Siena till after il Palio - check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palio_di_Siena

PS did I mention that I left Australia with a back pack weighing 10 kilograms? Yes, friends a sack of spuds, a very small child, the weight I put on in the last year (which seems to be falling off with all this walking).
And what can you do with such a back pack? You can run away fast from dodgy hostel proprietors, climb many many flights of stairs to other hostels, lift it well above your head onto train racks, use it as a seat... other ideas greatly appreciated.

Ciao from Siena

another brilliant Italy on a budget idea

.....
5. It is more cost effective to study Italian for two or more weeks than stay in a hostel/hotel as a tourist. If you book with certain language schools they find you crazy cheap accommodation in an apartment with a kitchen etc.

We're off to Siena..... Ciao x

PS. the colour green is definately not associated with sustainability (sostenibilità) here in Florence. I asked in Cafe Verdi (green) this morning and according to the owner Italians would think of Opera (Verdi - ah yes) well before they would think of anything environmental.
See image of Tuscany - verdi si? ;)

Well isn't Florence just a sheer relief when compared to the intensity of Rome. Wanted to share some travel tips as the whole sustainability thing isn't taking off as yet.

1. Don't line up just push in. There is usually a way - follow the Italians. We walked right past a massive line up for tickets into the Sistine Chapel simply because of the human tendancy to herd. In this case the herd went for the already long line and ignored the empty line that was also selling tickets to anyone willing to break free from the herd.

2. The piss smell in Rome and Florence is due to a serious lack of public toilets (another lesson I had forgotten). If you are on a budget go to a back street cafe and order an espresso to use the toilet. Cost the same as paying the service charge and you get a caffeine hit. Whoop!!!

3. If you plan to keep a blog check to see if the instructions will show up in English first. Opps!

4. Quite simply www.helpx.net

More soon