Going flight free isn’t just the right thing to do environmentally speaking, it can also add an enormous amount to the travel experience. You get to watch the landscape change as it flows past the train window, or make stops simply because you like the look of the place you’re passing through.
Here are some of our favourite ways to enjoy all the benefits of literal and figurative slow travel.
Flight free is one of the ten themes in our 100 Holidays series. Explore them all here.
If you’re making the effort to go flight-free, then you want to arrive at a place where sustainability has been built into the very fabric, like The Nuthatch Retreat, or some of our other best eco places.
On a stroll from Stable Cottage in Dunbartonshire, you might spot deer grazing in the morning mist and red squirrels scampering in the trees. Find out what else you can see at our great places for walking.
Leave at night, with Venice’s lagoons shining in the moonlight and doze your way to another beautiful Italian destination, as you wake to find yourself pulling into Rome on one of Europe’s most scenic and spectacular train journeys.
Roll down to Bubble 8 for a private tasting in the vaulted cellar of your home at the heart of Champagne country, or explore forests and islands on our other short French train adventures.
Casa Howard Firenze is as beautifully styled as its home city, Florence. It’s one of the places you’ll drop in as you tour Venice, Rome and more of Italy’s cultural highlights on an itinerary from flight-free travel experts Byway
Taking the train up to a remote stone farmhouse like Cose, where highland cattle roam the nearby fields, is one of the finest ways to experience the Scottish countryside. See some of our favourite Scottish rail routes here.
Follow journalist, author and train travel fan Monisha Rajesh on four of her favourite rail routes, from a Devon ramble to open-air carriages in the Pyrennees and a scenic rattle down the Douro valley.
The elegant, artistic Hôtel Sainte Beuve is one of the stops on a long, languid glide to the south of France, with every detail of your train journeys planned by flight-free itinerary specialists Byway.
Parts of The Lake District feel so wonderfully remote that you wouldn’t believe you can reach them by car, but transport links are better than ever, so here’s our handy guide to hitting the hills without once hitting the accelerator.
From Les Gîtes De Sonnay, a pleasant, flattish 900km route winds through the Loire valley from Cuffy to the mouth of the river in Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, on just one of our favourite cycle routes in France.
