To go abroad for one day?

[Teacherbee85]

I'm reading about people who do 'extreme day trips' from the UK to abroad.

I've been looking into it and I've found flights that go to various European cities - leaving first thing in the morning and coming back late at night.

I'm so tempted to say fuck it and just book a solo trip.

Any thoughts?

Urgh. I’d hate it. I really dislike travelling. I will once I figure out how to apparate.

It's mainly the flights which cause environmental damage, so it makes no difference to the environment whether you go for the day or for a fortnight. Unless you are planning on doing a dozen such trips during a fortnight's leave, obviously.

Little old me and my 2 flights every couple of years really aren't going to make a difference to the future of this planet when there's factories, air conditioning, tumble dryers etc.

All these vegan, overly processed food, how much waste do they produce?

Doesn't it take 23 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of almond milk?

Those flights will still fly and that's not down to me.

M friend booked us a day trip to Rome once, got to see and do quite a lot in the day, was absolutely shattered for days after though, that was in my 20's, now I'm pushing 50 I'd want an overnight stay as a minimum

Nothing will change unless the corporations causing the vast majority of all pollution on the planet change their ways, which so far isn’t going well. Personal impact has such a negligible effect. Go and enjoy your little holiday, OP.

I agree about corporations. I don’t agree that personal impact is negligible, or it wouldn’t be if everyone changed their behaviour.

I’ve done it a few times. I’ve done Geneva, Dublin, Helsinki & billund. All great fun but very tiring! Go for it.

This is a great idea actually - I can't afford any kind of holiday or overnight hotel, but I love Amsterdam and it's super quick .

As for the environmental impact;

I haven't been abroad for 2 years, don't have kids, hang my washing outside and I cycle everywhere ✌️.

This just reminded me ... years ago, in my former life, my employer hired a private plane and flew my team out to Le Touquet in France for lunch in a stunning restaurant.

If you only knew how much my life has now changed!!!

This is something I want to do but I haven't yet found the right combination of flights from my local airports at a sensible price on a day I can go. I can travel from Leeds, Manchester or Liverpool and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a huge choice in early morning and evening flights on the same day.

Although I have possibles for Girona, Amsterdam, Belfast and Palma. I've also been to the Isle of Man and Dublin for work a few times and that's really easy although not the sunny day out that the OP is hoping for.

We did a day-trip to Paris on the Eurostar, loved it. Although I won’t be going France if they have a far right government.

I think for countries that I have to fly to, I’d prefer to stay the night. But if you don’t mind an early start, a daytrip sounds great.

2 short haul flights (say, London-Berlin) will emit more carbon than those tumble driers unless those households are doing multiple loads every day of the week.

Sounds a ridiculous fad to me, you’d be so rushed and what happens if flights are delayed or cancelled. But sounds typical of the time we live in - just doing it for the social media pictures and not actually experiencing another place

Anyway, no I would not do an extreme day trip for environmental reasons, but I wouldn't do one by train either. I don't really see the point. Surely it's nice to spend at least a weekend somewhere, go out for dinner, wander aimlessly, rather than rushing around and constantly checking your watch to see if it's time to go back to the airport yet. If I want to do a day trip then there are plenty of towns, beaches and nature reserves within 100miles that I haven't visited yet.

Yes I know, but those flights will still fly regardless of whether you're personally on them or not.

I know some flights get cancelled but it's never for the reason "oh as a company, we feel a bit guilty about pollution so we've cancelled this flight!" If one is scheduled, it will fly.

You would have to have a mass exodus of people saying no more flights and I can't see that happening anytime soon because people are worked harder for shit money these days and they want their 2 weeks in the sun to make the crappy daily grudge seem worth it.

I suspect this probably started as a stealth marketing ploy by airlines to sell the shitty time flights.

Do it. I just went to jersey for the day. Super easy. 35 mins from lhr. Day bud pass £9. You can get around the whole island. You can do the same for Lux too. And public transport all free. Frankfurt also doable. The key is looking at the dust and lice from the airport to the centre of town. Good luck

I would love to do it , my only concern would be the outward flight being delayed.As far as the environment is concerned, before last year , I last flew in 2000!

Geneva also doable.

Environmental questions aside (I will have flown short haul multiple times this year so no legs to stand on), I think the key things for me would be a) distance to airport - if I had to gey up at 4am to make an 8am flight I would be so tired I couldn't enjoy the day, b) flight time - I'd probably want to keep it under 2-2.5hours to maximise time in the city and c) airport quality/transfer time. I was in Copenhagen the other day and landing on the runway to getting onto the train into town was 25 minutes. That's a complete game changer to somewhere where it's an hour's bus trip and the airport process itself takes another hour to get through passport control.

The environmental benefit of longer trips is where they reduce the travel of multiple trips. I once did a 2 week interailing around Europe and it was the equivilent of about 6 weekend breaks.

If it's a one-off, you see what you want to see on that trip, it's a moot point. If you return to see more, that's where it's less efficient.

It's the hanging around the airport chunks of the day that would put be off.

I've done this before but train to Paris. Got the Eurostar early morning and came back at night. Was very easy to do. I probably wouldn't catch a flight though, having to get there super early and then all the security and possible delays.

It sounds good until I think of the time needed to get to the airport and then wait in queues. That’s half a day really depending on how close you live to an airport.

Probably not. We tend to fly out early morning for holidays, because that's when the flights go and they're nearly always full or only have the odd seat empty.

Same for when the flight comes back. It's rare I've been on a plane that's not full tbh and one of the main reasons I've not done this yet is that I can't find a reasonably priced flight combination (eg under £150 or so return for the day) so the airlines are having no trouble filling flights.

But I think this is mainly a 'London' thing because there's far more choice of flights and airports and public transport to and from these airports actually exists. It's far more possible if you can use at least two airports that have multiple flights per day to many destinations and you can get the train there at 5 am and home again at 11 pm compared with a regional airport where there's one 'out and back' flight a day and you have to drive and park at at minimum cost of £40 because there's no public transport to get you there for the early flights.

But I wouldn't worry about being tired because I'd just sleep on the plane both ways.

I did Nice once, it was absolutely knackering but great fun. This thread is making me want to do another one