Someone told me seat61.com was written by an Aspie, and a WP'er asked the sitemaster if he was an Aspie. He isn't, however.
Public transport wise, you can certainly get as far as Singapore from Europe without taking a plane. Although seat61.com describes how to get as far as e.g. Australia plane-free, it would involve cruise ship or freight ship. I would count regular scheduled ferries or sea routes but wouldn't count cruise/freight ships as they are not regular scheduled services.
I'm a person who finds overland travel more fun than plane travel. If going to a far-away UK destination I do prefer a coach or a bus of possible. I recently did a train trip from New York to California and back and although I say I like overland travel... never again. The problem, you see, wasn't the travel, it was just too much in terms of people trouble.
Seat61.com has a lot of detail on how to get around Europe by train, as well as some information on other places, but I wonder if the site is missing anything key, such as any other ways of getting across the Atlantic or Pacific that doesn't involve taking a re-positioning cruise or getting on a cruise ship then abandoning it closest to where you want to go. I'd be surprised if there for instance really were no way to get to Iceland from either eastern Canada or even parts of Greenland. I understand that air travel is the most popular and almost always the fastest way to go, but what about for the folks who either fear flying for whatever reason, want to try cut down on their carbon footprint, or simply like to spend some time in the places they will pass through and/or enjoy a journey and see it as much an experience as the destination itself?
So, anyone here veterans of non-air travel and wish to write about their experiences of travelling or at least attempting to travel long distances without taking a plane?
I personally live in the north-east of the US and know one could take long-distance trains or buses (or even local transit services! -
www.megaloping.com) to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then a bus and ferry to western Newfoundland then another bus to St. John's in the east, but that's about as far as you can go because nothing else runs east of there that doesn't fly anyway. One could go north by ferry to Labrador then take buses or drive if you have a car up there but I don't think you can get to Greenland from there. I guess even though some routes may be physically possible even if it were only at certain times of the year, they aren't available due to lack of profit ability.
28 Oct 2009, 5:54 pm
