The Eden Project – Mixing it up
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Oz to UK – QM2 Half World Cruise
March – April 2023
Part 1 – Leaving – Melbourne – Sydney – Melbourne
Part 2 – Down under Australia – KI, SA, WA
Part 3 – From sea to island hopping (Mauritus & Reunion)
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September – November 2019
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November – January 2019
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January – February 2019
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June – July 2019
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Previous sustainable travel menu
Please note this is a multi-page post recording a 14 day sea voyage. I was the only passenger on CC Coral, a container ship travelling between Taiwan and New Zealand, in November 2019. It was an alternative to flying. But was it any more sustainable?
If you’re new to my sustainable (?!) journey across the world, here is a menu to help you find your way: https://ourrelationshipwithnature.com/overview-overland-uk-2-nz-without-flying-eleven-stages-in-fifty-days/
For fellow travellers who might notice errors and omissions, please add your comments. In fact, all comments welcome!
Friday 8th November night into Saturday morning – The Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
First night at sea. Mr Wang, my driver, had been a shipping agent for 25 years. He couldn’t understand why this giant of a company, CMA CGM, wanted to take passengers. Why? Other freight companies did not bother.
Well, Monsieur Wang, I was glad they did for they offered exactly what I wanted; a no-fuss way to travel without flying. I also felt comfortable that CMA CGM wore their environmental aspirations on their website. Mr Wang swooped the car around the grand driveway of the Excalibur hotel, lined with a small city’s worth of sparkly blue and white lights, and parked. We were there to pick up the new ship’s reever-electrician. (Whatever a reever is – it’s super important – I’ll find out later.)
From October to November 2019 I travelled from England to New Zealand to join a family reunion in the South Island. This blog series details my thinking, decisions and then the stages of the actual trip. It took much more money, probably more emissions, and a lot more time than flying. I hope you enjoy looking at the pictures, perhaps reading some of the account, and researching your own train/ferry/ship journey!
Find a CNN article recounting the story of a young man who took twenty-four trains from UK to Ningbo. What was he doing? I only took six! As a sidebar of the article, you will also find a comparison of carbon efficiency in some of the biggest airlines.
Part I: Is there any other way to get from UK to the Antipodes without flying? Why not fly?
Part II: Should you book your freighter cruise first?
Part III: What reasoning to avoid flying? What is the English environmental movment? What do Totnes, Transition Town and Extinction Rebellion have in common?
Part IV: Is Real Russia a good support system for ticketing and visas? How far should I plan ahead?
Part V: What’s the best way to organise Visas?
Part VI – What do Science, Politics and Spirituality have to do with travel?
Stage One – ferry from Harwich to Hoek of Holland and visiting Rotterdam
Stage Two – train to Germany and exploring Hamburg harbour
Stage Three – train to Berlin to visit memorials and consider humanity
Stage Four – train to Warsaw and considering a different kind of memorial
Stage Five – overnight train from Warsaw to Moscow
Stage Six – visiting Moscow to marvel at metro stations
Stage Seven – multi-page post TransSiberian – TransMongolian Railway from Moscow to Beijing
Stage Eight – visiting Beijing and the Great Wall of China
Stage Nine – out of China: trains to Ningbo, Fuzhou and Pingtan and ferry to Taiwan
Stage Eleven – Two weeks shipping with CMA CGM Coral from Taiwan to New Zealand
If you’re new to my sustainable (?!) journey across the world, here’s a menu to help you find your way: https://ourrelationshipwithnature.com/overview-overland-uk-2-nz-without-flying-eleven-stages-in-fifty-days/
For fellow travellers who might notice errors and omissions, please add your comments. In fact, all comments welcome!
The Moscow Metro is similar to other metros in my experience. You buy a ticket. (There’s often an English speaking window at the station.) You wave the ticket at a machine. You find your line. You get on the train. You get off and change to the next line. You get off at your stop. You find your way to the surface, point in the right direction and walk towards your destination.
BUT! Moscow Metro IS different! The stations are the People’s Palaces! They are GORGEOUS!
Continue readingAn English woman, a New Zealander and an Australian walked into a bar.
Wait!
They were all ME!
And, it being a Brighton bar, I had a delicious vegan roast lunch.
If you’re new to my sustainable (?!) journey across the world, here’s a menu to help you find your way: https://ourrelationshipwithnature.com/overview-overland-uk-2-nz-without-flying-eleven-stages-in-fifty-days/
For fellow travellers who might notice errors and omissions, please add your comments. In fact, all comments welcome!
Whenever I saw ‘Contact’ on an email I felt sick. It would be from my shipping company. I would not open it until I was in a safe place and able to deal with their harsh reality. I felt like a moth fluttering against a window; unseen and incomprehensible barrier. Why did their company take such an unreasonable line?
Continue readingThis is the story of my journey to a family reunion in New Zealand in January 2020. I’m in the UK. How to travel without burning av gas?
If you’re new to my sustainable (?!) journey across the world, here’s a menu to help you find your way: https://ourrelationshipwithnature.com/overview-overland-uk-2-nz-without-flying-eleven-stages-in-fifty-days/
For fellow travellers who might notice errors and omissions, please add your comments. In fact, all comments welcome!
Once I established my travel would be by train and sea, I turned, with some trepidation, to The Man in Seat 61. The Man lists each step of the travel.
I hasten to add the trepidation was not due to any doubt about his veracity and, in fact, I wrote him an email thanking him for making even imagining this journey possible. He wrote back, saying, ‘Enjoy your trip!’ I felt a long way away from actual travel. I didn’t even have a ticket or a visa or immunisations or those … unknown unknowns … like a destination.
First things first. Following his suggestions, I was almost certain I would be travelling from Singapore to Australia by freighter ship. These ships are cargo carriers; they’re already going this way, there’s no song and dance, it’s a working transporter. They take few passengers and those passengers are left to themselves, pretty much. Sounded ideal. The carbon is already spent before I got involved. I would just hitch a ride. (For something like $4,000 Australian dollars).
To begin, The Man advises getting in touch with these lovely people:
http://www.cruisepeople.co.uk/
http://www.travltips.com/cruises/freighter/overview.php
or
http://www.freightercruises.com/
And, I’m not sure how I discovered these kind people:
https://www.globoship.ch/tour/grosse-asien-australien-asien-reise/
Reading through these websites reassured me that freighter travel was safe, comfortable and within my physical capabilities. I sent emails to all concerned and within a week had four quotes from Singapore to Australia.
They were all within much of a muchness but there were certain differences. It will depend on what you want to do and where you want to go as to what you choose. Yes indeed. Just where did I want to go in Australia? Fremantle? Adelaide? The next stop, surprisingly, was Sydney. Then the ships seem to loop back to Melbourne after that.
The Man in Seat 61 blithely recommends travel through several Asian countries to arrive in Singapore. So many different languages, borders and currencies – I imagined basic survival was going to be taxing – especially as a vegan!
Continue reading
OVERLAND (AND SEA) FROM ENGLAND TO NEW ZEALAND – Is it possible?
PART I
Pre-pre-planning or
WHY?
From the moment I arrived in Europe I knew I didn’t want to fly long distance again. Flying felt wrong.
