Has anyone done an extreme day trip?

[luluxxx]

Well I guess mine would be 24hours
Next weekend 7pm flight to Alicante and lands at 10pm
Return home the next day at 9pm departure and gets home for 11pm
Flights with Ryanair for £34.99 and hotel is £85 in Alicante

Im so tempted
Cheked weather and next Sunday is showing as 24degrees

I find airports and airplanes exhausting so it wouldn’t be for me. I want at least two weeks between journeys to feel it’s worth the effort.

I can’t think of anything I’d less like to do 🫣. Sounds like a lot of time sitting in airports/transfers for the amount of time you have at the destination. Also don’t feel comfortable about the environmental aspect.

We spent 2 hours in the immigration queue last week going into a European airport - and that was without them doing the new EES scanning.
I wouldn’t want the hassle for one day.

my recently retired colleague did Milan last week. Flew into Bergamo, 1 hour into Milan.Late flight back. He had a great time

Yeah, I luckily had enough points to fly business for pretty much the price of an economy ticket.

I did a day trip to York for their uni open day. 10 hours on the train and DS1 kept talking to me! That was pretty exhausting.

I can't think of many things that I would enjoy less than wandering around somewhere feeling tired and grumpy after an early start! Plus I hate airports and all the faff of flying so doing that twice in a short space of time, no thanks! I have a four night minimum holiday policy for a reason!

I’ve done Edinburgh Glasgow Paris and Belfast loads of times for work and like it that way. Only leisure one I’ve done was first flight out of London about 7am to Rome and back at about 9pm the next day. That was great, we had 2 full days in Rome. I would happily do that again

Having had two bad experiences with the new EES I wouldnt dare try this!

This is like saying there’s no environment impact to eating meat because the cow was already dead when you bought the burger. Supply and demand.

I’ve done a couple as I’m next door to Heathrow… they are tiring tho. We did Edinburgh in December for Xmas market and sightseeing and we’ve also been to Madrid in March

I'd be too knackered but younger people would probably be fine. I'd also worry about delays, my son visited Lisbon for a weekend recently & it took 3.5 hours to get through passport control!

I've done a few to Poland, which have been amazing, because you can get very cheap flights from my local airport. Plus most of the people on the plane are Polish passport holders which reduces the EES worry.

I've also got a couple of others booked this year, including seeing the solar eclipse in Spain in August. I also have a few ideas for Ireland, just need to get the planets of cheap flights and my availability to align.

(For the obligatory climate bores, even if there was absolutely no European leisure flights, it wouldn't make a noticeable difference to the global carbon footprint and I'm child free, which means my carbon footprint is way behind people who have children - you could fly to New York monthly and it would be less than an impact than having even one child).

I have also been on a few train trips that could be considered to be 'extreme day trips' eg Yorkshire to Bristol for the day to just experience 'there and back to see how far it is'.

If you find somewhere you like, you can always go back for a proper holiday.

back In the day British Rail used to run excursions from eg Manchester to Edinburgh or Bath. Wasn't crazy money as I remember just eg 3 quid each. I remember going to Windsor a couple of times and Bath. You'd get a few hours there. Get back late but a good day out

It's really daft to compare the impact of flying vs the impact of having children. Those children will be paying your pension when your holidays are a distant memory.

The impact of flying on an individual's CO2 impact isn't trivial - deciding against taking a couple of flights would likely have more impact than say, switching to a vegan diet or radically cutting you consumption of new products.

And we're not in a place where we've got the luxury of being able to choose to cherry-pick, we're globally so far off meeting our climate targets we really need to be pulling all the levers at once.

And I'm really not a Greta Thunberg climate doomsayer - I still fly, drive a car, eat the occasional steak. But I think we all need to be giving some consideration to the climate impact of our travel and consumption habits - just saying "oh the planes would be flying anyway" and "it's nothing compared to China!" and all the other excuses that get made are just sticking our fingers in our ears and going "lah-lah-lah".

Going through security and passport control twice in one day... no thank you. I honestly can't think of anything worse.

My thinking too. It sounds exhausting and a lot of faff and waiting around in airports for quite little reward. I'd be much more inclined to do it for a city break weekend where I can see/ do lots but definitely not for a beach.

The environmental impact alone would put me off completely. If I'm going to damage the environment I'd rather do it for a longer break to make it 'worth' it.

Given flight delays and the current ESS queues, I wouldn't bother - you could easily spend most of your trip in airports.

I did a trip to Poland, a full day at Auschwitz and the museum returning home the same evening. Left stupidly early in the morning, taxi to airport at 3am and got home really late.
long day, cold and dark early due to winter, don’t recommend. I recommend going, just not doing it all in one day lol

Yes, my friends and I went to London last year, this year we’re going to Belfast.

So by the time you get to the hotel you're literally ready for bed, then up for breakfast, day in Alicante for like 12 hours and then home in a plane again? Sounds too rushed really

My friend and I went to Ibiza for one night to see a Dj we liked. We stayed in a hotel and spent the next day on the beach before we flew home. It was so fun and didn’t feel rushed. I love travelling so would do something like this again potentially but 2 nights is probably better.

I waver between admiring people who do them, but also thinking it looks and sounds bloody awful. 😂

I’ve been to Canada for the weekend a couple of times (for important events). Knackering, but better than not going.
I’m very tempted to try a day-trip to Italy.

If I was going to pay for a hotel I'd rather go early on the first day stay over and come back later the second day so you get two days out of it