Product Description

As concerns grow about global warming and more people look for holidays closer to home, Time Out has put together a selection of inspirational trips to Europe (and sometimes beyond!) that won't cost you or the planet a single air mile. Europe's railway system is getting faster and sleeker, and now that Eurostar trains depart from St Pancras, with great connections to the north of the UK, continental destinations are more accessible than ever before. You can get to Paris in two hours 15 minutes, Brussels in under two hours and Strasbourg and Cologne in under five. By 2010, Europe will have 4,000 miles of high-speed lines - and some very boutique-y sleeper cars, making plane-free holidays a realistic and stress-free alternative to air travel. But "Flight-Free Europe" isn't just a railway guide.It also includes trips by boat - including the new cruise-style ferries - bicycle and motorbike, even car (now hire companies are offering greener options), covering a variety of destinations from classic cities to undiscovered countryside. For each, we give a selection of the best places to sleep, eat and experience, and some great ideas for side trips. There are also activity breaks and a section of longer journeys to undertake for their own sake, bringing back the idea of the Grand Tour and rescuing the romance of travel.This book snapshots journey time: Under two hours - city breaks in Brussels and Dublin; cycling in Pas de Calais; wilderness hiking in the Orkneys. An easy day - city breaks in Marseilles, Cologne and Lyons; wine-tasting along the Rhone; best of Brittany. Overnighters - city breaks in Toulouse, Turin and Barcelona; touring the Canal du Midi on a peniche; exploring Spain's Picos de Europa. Grand tours - Scottish Isles and Iceland; Orient Express; Baltic ferry-hopping; yachting in Croatia; Trans-Siberian Express; Stavanger, European City of Culture 2008, and the Norwegian fjords.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44202 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"Provides all you need to plan 30 breaks, by rail, road and sea" --Daily Telegraph

Review
"Handy and environmentally friendly"

Customer Reviews

Excellent guide to starting out with European travel
This book gives a great introduction for the green traveller who would like to see Europe, but does not want to fly there. In the book are a set of city guides that give clear advice backed up by some fantastic colour photography. The key advantage of this book over other guide books is the fact that it describes how to get there, how long it will take and the costs you can expect to pay. The book also makes it clear how to use the individual transport networks in each place making travelling within them easy. All the trips are planned from the UK, therefore this book will be of less relevence to non UK nationals. Overall a fantastic guide book.

Not for everyone...
Great if you're a family (lots of useful snippets on how to keep the kids occupied etc) and if you're on a whistle-stop tour of Europe or a long weekend, but if you want to take the time to discover the place, then this book isn't for you (even if, in all fairness, it doesn't purport to be)

The writing is very opinionated - not a bad thing per se - but it can get tiring. In the Brussels entry, for example, he waffles on (hoho) about the EU not being democratically elected and spouts the usual tired clichés about the place rather than providing some relevant info. He doesn't even attempt to scratch the surface, choosing a few touristy bars just off Brussels' main square. This is repeated in a few other entries too.

He fares much better elsewhere - the Calais cycle route entry, for example, was quite enlightening.

So, in conclusion - opinionated, superficial but fairly interesting and useful in places. I would recommend this to friends but only if they're the sort of people who do extra research of their own...