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?

I've never been able to find the flights for this. I keep hearing about people doing it so I've looked every now and then. Found nothing cheap.

I used to take my class to Rome for the day. 6.30 a.m. Stanstead to Ciampino, airport bus to Termini, bus and driver picked us up - to Forum, Palatine, Colosseum, pizza and gelati on the run, Trajan's column and Market, Pantheon, Piazza Navona/Ara Pacis. Back home for 9.30 p.m. Best fun ever!

I can see why this is tempting I really can but from an environmental perspective it’s kind of grotesque. It’s one thing to fly for a 2 week summer holiday because I don’t really expect people to be such hair-shirt environmentalists that everyone has to forego 2 weeks in the sun (I’ll be flying for my summer holiday this year). But for the most part people seem to be doing these “extreme day trips” just because they can, because it’s cheap, for the sheer hell of it. It’s not as though people are typically choosing to do a day trip instead it’s in addition to other trips. It’s all extra flights.

And it’s a nonsense to say “the flight is going whether I am onboard or not” - you are creating the demand - ok that flight on that particular day will still take off, but long term flights only operate where it’s economic to do so. The person who talked about the environmental impact of producing almond milk earlier - if someone said “if I didn’t drink it, someone else would” - would you accept that argument? It’s exactly the same.

I think there needs to be some massive reform to the way we pay for flying. Someone used the example of using tumble driers earlier so I did some rough maths - a short haul flight emits about as much CO2 as using a tumble drier every day for a year. But using the tumble drier daily could cost £500 and a return short haul flight might be £20? It’s completely insane - we need to pay the carbon cost of flying.

I did it as a sort of dare pre lockdown. Ryanair Stansted to Malaga then 40min train to Fuengirola. Lunch in the main Square, couple of hours on the beach than journey in reverse and home by 9pm. Bought 3 cartons cigs in Fuengirola and 'sold on' to partner for price halfway between what I'd paid and what he used to pay at home - made enough to cover whole trip including wine and lunch. It's a trip I do regularly so just felt like a bus trip tbh and in my late 60s was not at all exhausting. Don't dob me in for selling cigs on!!

Friend and I did a day trip to Amsterdam for our 30th Birthdays.
It was good fun, but I do remember being really tired most of the day because of the super early start and of course no hotel/apartment to sit down for a couple of hours.

I think an overnighter looks better. We have early morning flights to Copenhagen and early evening ones coming back, so I am thinking of doing a one nighter at some point.

You'll get lots of people telling you not to re the travel and environment.

However, I'm going to,visit dd for the weekend. It's not the same day but I'm leaving on a Saturday morning and returning Sunday afternoon, so not much longer.

I'm going to visit dd who will be living in another country for at least a year and I only have a weekend to do it as can't take week days off. So a same day or one night day trip will be more the norm for us for at least the next year or two.

If the plane is going anywhere staying for a few days or staying for one makes no additional impact.

@4fingerKitKat totally agree

TBH, I'm surprised how many people are encouraging OP to go for it

We went to Benidorm in January and it was a tonic to see the sunshine, lunch in tapas alley, beer on the beach and back home. Do it

But the carbon cost of individuals doing this a couple of times a year is dwarfed by weekly business travel, flying tat produced in mega factories all over the world, people having children - the annual carbon cost of a monthly return flight to New York is less by far than having even one child, so if people are expected to pay for the carbon cost of flying, they need to also pay the cost of other life choices.

I have no DC, don't buy tat and eat hardly any meat. Even if I fly short haul a few times a year, it's nowhere near that of non flyers who have children.

But the demand is there regardless to op so where as you have a point about demand...it's there at this point so no point giving everyone a lecture about the environment. It's not us little ppl that are the issue... tell the wags who take a private flight to where ever they have been traveling to during the euros.

Of course. I don't think anyone fails to understand that for a single trip it's the same.

The problem with extreme day trips is they encourage frequent short trips rather than single long trips, therefore more air travel.

It's a fairly basic concept.

It seems crazy that airlines offer these cheap deals

OP is in Scotland. You can fly from Edinburgh to Belfast for £32 return with Easyjet. I can see the attraction, but terrible for the environment

Air travel accounts for 2% of global emissions. Also they are among one of the few sectors actively investing in reducing emissions.

To OP, please do check in to let us know how you get on. Enjoy!

I did this three years ago, 5.55am flight to Dubrovnik, we were in the old town having coffee before lunch. Explored all afternoon, took a small boat across the bay to Cavtat, had a swim, back to the old town for an amazing dinner, back to the airport for 10pm flight home. £39.99 return.

If I was close to Stansted I'd be doing Ryanair somewhere for weekends at least once a month. I love to travel, always find cheap flights and travel with a sub-1kg bag for a week.

Never thought about a day trip, sounds great! We have free lounge passes too so we would only need to buy lunch 😎

Once drove to Serbia for dinner (from Bulgaria) and Macedonia for a beer.

I don't care about my carbon footprint if I'm honest, the whining is probably coming from a lot of hysterical hand wringing virtue signalling people with their flown-in asparagus, mangos, strawberries etc in the fridge who drive far more mikes in a newer and larger vehicle than I do. Let he who is without sin...

What do you mean by it's a fairly basic concept... It's a fact the plane is going anyway. You can harp on about encouragement of day trips as much as you want but the plane IS going anyway because there will be many passengers booking that flight for many different reasons. You are talking about a world where everyone makes a choice based on not getting a plane to stop demand so planes fly less.. you're not in the really world if you think this is life.

We did it quite a few times, didn't fly,so not a big impact on the environment,we took the Eurostar. My late father used to go to Belgium monthly.

I've been abroad for one day - often for work, but also on a day out. It is tiring, as the early flight means a very early start time. You tend to arrive long before the tourist things start (but the next flight, if there is one, may be much later and make it not worthwhile), you WILL hit a point where you want to fall in a heap for a nap, you feel you need to pack in a whole weekend of tourist things in 12-15 hours to make it worthwhile, you can't enjoy a relaxed dinner as you need to get back to the airport, and definitely can't do a show/theatre etc for the same reason, you don't have time for shopping really and it's hard to carry bags around all day....

But you can go see somewhere you might want to and don't want to spend a full weekend in, it's cheaper because you aren't paying for a hotel as well, you might have a glass of wine with dinner but because you're getting a flight you can't have a tonne of alcohol so saving on that too etc.

Personally, the day trip one was that we'd already paid for the flights for a wedding that was cancelled, so we went anyway. It was fun but exhausting.

And I do too many red eye trips for work anyway (was on the last flight last night but at least this is a few days so my red eye is not until Monday, but I have 2 full days of meetings and conferences before I get a weekend with my family (I am posted abroad at the moment and family couldn't come with me - but I've always had a lot of trips involving either late evenings to get dinner in the airport, hotel literally to have a shortened sleep, meetings all day, late night flight home with dinner in the airport again and another shortened sleep and back to office early, or occasionally having the flights not available so having to red eye over and back that night and hope my meeting notes make sense all day).

The UK accounts for 1% of global emissions. Sorry to say, but in the grand scheme of things, personal impact is very negligible. Until the US and China, and large corporations step up, there is very little that any of us can do.

The logic breakdown here is hilarious.

I'd do it in winter when the airport is quiet, you can just walk through then, but at this time of year there's queues so you have to arrive 90 minutes before departure at least. I'm only 25 minutes from airport and can park free (shhh) 5 minutes walk away on a country lane and use the back entrance, still not sure why others don't, so apart from possible queues it's quicker than the train to London to fly to Amsterdam or Dublin or Edinburgh or Paris.

I think it sounds awful. You'd have to be up at the crack of dawn, barely have worked out where everything is, and then have to go home again. Plus I think flying somewhere close enough for a day trip is really irresponsible environmentally.

I'd stick to somewhere within train reach or else at least make it a long weekend.

"But the carbon cost of individuals doing this a couple of times a year is dwarfed by weekly business travel, flying tat produced in mega factories all over the world, people having children - the annual carbon cost of a monthly return flight to New York is less by far than having even one child, so if people are expected to pay for the carbon cost of flying, they need to also pay the cost of other life choices. "

And don't forget the private jets used by the rich many, many times over the year.
100's of private jets even flew into cop28, for goodness sake.

Go for it. We went to Belgium for waffles.
Flew at 6am, returned at 5 30. Cost us less than £100 each all in.
Keep looking for another spur of the moment trip but so far the flight timings aren't in our favour, but definitely still looking.