to not want to go by train.

[Frazzled2207]

I have posted before about husband who is very worried about climate change. I am also worried and we are taking lots of steps to reduce our carbon footprint but there's a limit to what I'm prepared to do (at the moment). Currently down to one car and saving for an electric. Solar panels on roof (these cost a fortune). Cutting down on unnecessary purchases (he literally never buys new clothes but accepts stuff I get him for birthdays etc). Massively cut down on meat

Anyway he never wants to fly again. I have said that I am willing to cut down on flying to maybe once every year or two but am not going to say I'm never getting on a plane again.

So his best mate who we see very rarely lives in a nice part of Europe. I also get on well with the mate and his wife and they have kids similar ages to ours who are young primary age. They have invited us to stay this summer.

Husband wanted to look into going by train so I did. In some depth.
Train option costs between £800 and £1000 for four of us. We are up north so this means three hours in a train (cross London) then Eurostar to Paris (cross Paris) then four hours in a train. With two small children and luggage in tow. The way the train works we would leave the house at 6.30am and get there for 10pm.

Or.... there is a flight option. Both we and the friends are close to an airport and direct flight for all four of us costs £300 if we're savvy.

He thinks we should take the train despite the fact that it is enormously more expensive and stressful. I have suggested a compromise that we fly one way and train the other way. But I am not up for the train both ways. The kids are not easy to entertain and having to cross Paris with them in a bit of a rush on a summer Saturday fills me with dread, as well as getting to our friends' house really late when they will be super grumpy.

We can consider overnight in Paris etc but obviously it all adds to the cost and he has limited leave.

AIBU to not want to go by train? I have said me and the kids will fly and he can get the train. But he doesn't think that gives the right message to our children (that flying is an unnecessary luxury), nor does flying one way.

Both of us want to go to see the mate, if we just don't go there will need to go somewhere else for our summer holidays and will probably have exactly the same argument. I'm just not sure how to resolve this as we are both as stubborn as Mrs May and Mr Corbyn at the moment.

I couldn't be with someone this ridiculous sorry.

As pp mentioned it can be a bit tricky to get the best price on all the trains due to the tickets being released at different times. The most annoying is the Eurostar being released six months before travel. Other European trains are released 3/4 months in advance (with UK trains being released 13 weeks in advance, less for advance tickets, although I normally find this less of an issue).

In the past few years SNCF have released all their tickets for the summer for the same day, usually around the start of April. You can get an email reminder of this date if you try to book the dates you want now, with someone like loco2 - they won't let you book, but will let you give them your email address.

Generally you can get quite a good price for train tickets in the summer holidays, particularly if you can be flexible with your dates - it is May half term that can get expensive, particularly on the Eurostar, because everyone in the UK wants the same days in the same week.

A 70 min gap between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon is quite tight imo, but I am very, VERY risk averse. I think seat61.com would find it perfectly adequate. We usually get the 09:24 Eurostar which arrives in Paris at 12:47 and leave Gare de Lyon at 14:40ish. This is luck rather than judgement however, because there is really only one Eurostar and one TGV we can get to make the journey possible. This always gives us lots of time to spare to go to the Monop by Gare de Lyon to buy water and snacks for the journey.

Please PM me if you want any advice/info on booking trains - over the years we have got the train to Dubrovnik (+ ferry), Ljubljana, Turin/Milan/La Spezia, Cinque Terre, Berlin, Prague, Brittany and Limoges. Most of these journeys (not the first two) were done with our dds (now 12 and 10).

You don't say where you live, but if you would be getting a Virgin train to London, they do a ticket called a family return - up to two adults and up to four children can travel on it, you need to book your outbound train and this is inflexible (once booked), but you can get any train home. This is £60 for us, and you don't need a railcard (and is much cheaper than anything else we could book).

Re missing a connection - the international conditions of travel (CIV) mean you can catch the next train if your previous train being delayed means you miss your connection. Eurostar are also very flexible - twice (over many years!) our TGV has been cancelled due to strike action, meaning we would miss our Eurostar. Both times we have rung them and they have booked us onto the next Eurostar we said we could catch with no fuss and no cost to us. And both times we have had generous financial compensation from SNCF. We have also had money back on journeys that were a bit delayed, but had no knock-on effect on the rest of our journey.

Janek that's really helpful thanks. Nice that others think it's doable. Very reassuring that Eurostar have been flexible in the past two when you've been very stuck.
Part of the reason I am keen to give it a try is that last year we got cancelled coming back from hols on Easyjet and it cost us an arm and a leg to get home, not to mention lots of stress.
To those who are asking me why I am doing the faffing - at the end of the day I do want a family holiday and if I don't do the organising (and I enjoy it to a point) then my husband won't get round to booking anything until its too expensive to do anything.
I have also realised that I had not added on baggage to the £300 flight quote, so likely looking at £400. And it's possible that the train might be down to £600 if I'm really clever and a bit lucky, suddenly the difference in cost isn't so big. And the side trip to Disney could be a definite plus in the kids eyes (and would avoid the 70 minute transfer completely).
His views are definitely the extreme end of things, but I don't think he's totally ridiculous.

I’m genuinely really surprised that someone so environmentally conscious would be on board with going to Disneyland. That place must use tonnes of energy?!

In the past few years SNCF have released all their tickets for the summer for the same day, usually around the start of April. You can get an email reminder of this date if you try to book the dates you want now, with someone like loco2 - they won't let you book, but will let you give them your email address.

If you want specific dates that coincide with when the French go on holiday then it can be a bundle on the morning that SNCF ticket sales open and it won't necessarily be cheap even 3 months. If you can travel midweek you will dramatically increase your chance of getting a TGV bargain.

Euro Disney is presumably mostly powered by French electricity (about 3/4 nuclear) so relatively low CO2 but not "green".

We are planning to take the train this summer rather than fly, but TBH this has nothing to do with carbon footprint and everything to with being fed up with the hassle of flying. Our last few journeys have been fraught with cancellations, delays and terribly tight connecting flights (almost missed) at Charles de Gaulle.

We will be travelling to Avignon and we live in NW England. Our plan is to travel to London the night before and hopefully stay in a TravelLodge near St Pancras. Then, although can't book just yet, it looks like there is a direct train from St Pancras to Marseille, calling at Avignon. I think the direct service only runs about three times a week.

Personally I think that sounds much easier to manage than a flight. On the way back we will probably have to change at Paris though as the times don't work as well.

@FraggleRocking well yes but still tiny per person compared with flying. He is not keen at all but will put up with it for the kids as a kind of compromise.

That seems fair I hope you and your family have a lovely holiday!

THE most joyless Mumsnet thread!

Honestly you're doing so much to help the environment (which is amazing!) but it's useless if you end up not being able to afford stuff or end up paying so much more!

I would put my foot down and say plane or he has to pay for the train out of his own (no joint accounts!) money.

Flying would be a lot easier anyway for your children as you said, don't start the holiday on a stressful note from the train.

deforestation due to production of feed for livestock (most soya is eaten by livestock, not vegetarians) and methane production from cows - just 2 ways eating meat is incredibly bad for the planet. Well eat sheep meat then

Tell him to stop eating meat and dairy, that'll easily offset the omissions from two plane journeys.

He could start using a horse and cart.

Not to derail the thread, but those mentioning China's emissions; the population is 20 times that of ours, and their emissions roughly the same. I'm not sure it's a fair comparison against our tiny country. However everyone can do more to reduce their carbon footprint.

You could put the savings by flying yourself towards better eco savings, i.e. the electric car as you said. I really don't think he can argue with that.

I’m really confused why it’s YOU who is doing all the work on planning this trip when HE is the one with the scruples.

I agree you should let him take the children on his own on the Train. If you stay at home, that will reduce the carbon footprint even further. Have a nice staycation and visit your friends / family here in the UK.

That will be a great lesson for your kids . At the moment, all they are learning is that daddy’s anxieties create extra work for mummy.

Let’s how how dedicated he is to The Cause when it’s HIM who is inconvenienced.

I suspect that this is his way of controlling you while looking virtuous and claiming the high moral ground.

And yes, some of us DO think of the carbon footprint. So much so that we have recycled children rather than giving birth to more.

I haven't read the whole thread so this may have already mean mentioned but there is a specific telephone number you can call to book trains right the way through from your home station to wherever you are going in Europe. It's called something like international Travel Dept. I did it for my whole family from their home station in Cumbria to Cannes a few years ago and the return cost was £136 pp! It even provided tickets for the underground in London. Obviously that will have increased but still should be much cheaper than your £1,000. You were allowed to break the journey so long as it was less than 24 hours so we decided not to have the stressful rush across Paris and had a night in a hotel there which was fun and added to the adventure. It was one of the best holidays we had and we were traveling with elderly grandparents and young children.

I see the train journey as part of the holiday . Depends where you are going but the Eurostar goes straight through to the south, doesn’t it? If not, perhaps you can change in Brussels, which is much easier

It's my dream to do a European train journey. We can swap husbands.

It's my dream to do a European train journey.
honestly, don't expect too much, it's really just a train. A bit better than our English trains possibly, but that's pretty much it. If you have travelled on the continent or countries with civilised trains, you have already experienced better.

Eurostar customer service is horrendous. Because the company has the monopole of the line, they really are unpleasant, unhelpful because they do not need to make any effort.

Maninseat61 is really helpful to get the best tickets for your trip, last summer we managed to do a 10 day trip if Austria and Switzerland with a 2 and 3 year old. 1 night in each place and a sleeper train! It's sounds mad but was actually quite easy and the kids loved it. European trains seem so much more geared towards children in general.

I haven't read the whole thread, but if you book tgv on the sncf website it's much cheaper.

Hi OP - the train tickets for this summer are now available (I booked our holiday last week). Good luck if you're still going!

Thanks Janek. We've been putting off organising partly because we can't discuss it without falling out and partly because of uncertainties re Brexit. Will look into it again now though.

I took my then 1 year old and 3 year old on a train to Italy via Paris for a holiday. It was amazing. Do it.

I do London to rural france near switzerland on my own with my son every year. It's the Eurostar, a tgv and a car hire (sorry no other way when you are in rural France). It takes around 8 hours, counting the time between trains. I much prefer it to flying. Gare du Nord to Gard de Lyon is 20 minutes at most on the RER D. Be aware that kids over 4 years old need ticket on the RER and Metro and buy those in the Eurostar not at the station as there is always a massive queue. The Eurostar and TGV are lovely. You can walk around and the cafe is very much. BUT be aware that August is prime tourist season for the French and we love travelling by train so TGV tickets go fast.