I believe it is sailboats though how big can they get? I would love to visit Ireland from St. John’s then bicycle and ride the train around the emerald island.
I should also look at the most fuel efficient air plane model with a direct route.
You haven’t said anything about practical, so the answer might be to cycle across Alaska, take passage on a sail boat across the Bering Strait, then cycle across Russia to reach the eastern borders of Europe, continue cycling until you reach either Brussels or Paris, then take the Eurostar to London. Cycle from there to a port on the west coast of Great Britain (Hollyhead probably leaves the shortest crossing), cross the Irish sea by sail boat, and you have finally arrived in Ireland for your cycling trip!
N.B. Current geopolitical concerns may impact the feasibility of this route.
Of course the mansplainers come in with sarcastic comments…
Sorry, it wasn’t meant to be sarcastic, I just thought it was a funny, if silly, solution to the problem you’d presented. I think that route has actually been done in the past, so I didn’t think it was too far out of line.
In answer to your question about sailing the Atlantic and the boat sizes needed, it looks like a cruising yacht culd do it in somewhere between 15-30 days, so you wouldn’t need a particularly large ship, but you’d definitely want an experienced crew.
People need these sorts of craft moved across the ocean every so often (when they’re being delivered to their new owners for example), so if you trained as a crew member you might be able to get a berth on a trip like that, arguably reducing your footprint even more.
Once again, my appologies for the way my previous post came across, if was not meant like that.
I appreciate the follow up comment!
Look up Karl Bushby or the Goliath expedition. He’s been working on walking around the world since the 90s and is nearly done with it. The Bering strait route is one he used on foot. Apparently it took a long time to get through Russia though, so if you plan to travel there you’d better have friends in high places, lol.
In the winter you can trek through the arctic on the ice sheets to Svalbard, which is in Europe
That’s so far up North.
I’ll be traveling to Europe soon, and my approach is to do a few things:
- find the most direct flights I can
- I’ll actually stay over for a few weeks to visit with friends and family, planning not to travel again for multiple years after this
- while over there, travel by train only
- offset the emissions from traveling (using https://www.goldstandard.org/)
It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I could come up with.
Definitely a good approach with well thought out considerations.
There are occasionally flights from the northeastern end of Canada to Scotland. That’s a surprisingly short trip! Checking different airports’ destinations on Wikipedia was a useful way to find out about this!
Now I just have to make it from Alberta to St. John ;) But I’m all seriousness, if you live in Eastern Canada, that may be something to consider.
Seriously: there is a train. Yes, it takes probably in the ballpark of five or six days, but since it exists, I really think that’s what should be used. Because the friction between steel wheel and the rail is so low, even a diesel train causes about 70 % less climate-warming emissions per kilometre than flying does.
I’m about to go from Helsinki to Ragusa and back with my child who is under 10-year-old, and that’s going to be more rail kilometres than your trip through Canada would be. It should be the standard to always travel in normal ways and only fly when no other options exist. (I’d say countries’ leaders meeting up or a close relative being about to die any minute are examples of when it’s okay to travel in a way that kills people)
I wish some kind of “this many person-kilometres of flying kills one person” numbers would be published. The number exists, we just need to figure out what it is.
It’s an option if money is no object, and you have lots of time. Train travel in Canada is not like on Europe, sadly. There’s like three trains a week going from Edmonton to Toronto, from where you can get what looks like one train a day to Halifax. That costs the same as the full flight, and if I flew to Scotland and took the train from there, I’d be traveling for a week to get to where I’m going. I realize it’s still a marvel to be able to do this at all, but it’s just not going to be practical in the near future.
(Edit: changed “never” to “in the near future”. Never is a long time :)
That being said, I overall agree with the sentiment of traveling as little as possible and by the last impactful mode possible.
My friend was planning to sail transatlantic alone on a tiny sailboat. I know he is capable of this mad shit, both in skill and in level of recklessness, but I don’t know he did it (he has adhd so hard that listening to his accounts of things happened is a rare and chaotic experience). But from what he said, mortality rate in these single person adventures is non negligible. He was in some sort of chaotic depression mood at that point.
I understand many people in Scandinavia sail to Americas occasionally. There is famous Greta, I think, who did it with a tiny crew? With crew and radios and reasonably sized boats, it must be much safer these days. I don’t like traveling myself, so it’s mostly second hand knowledge.
Should you want to travel within Europe once you’ve made it this far, here’s a search tool for all train timetables in Europe: https://fahrplan.oebb.at/webapp/?language=en_GB
(Okay, it’s missing Euskotren, in Ukraine it only shows long distance trains, and in Estonia and Latvia only the one international connection is shown. But I think this is the full list of exceptions)
Wow i didn’t know about that, only ever thought it’s for austria. Thanks, til
The site of German railways does the same, but is missing a few nifty features. That’s why I typically recommend ÖBB’s site.
Then again, the German site, http://bahn.de/, has an address that is faster to use because it loads directly to the search without first needing to click a “show timetable only” button and then even waiting a few seconds for “Scotty” to load. But indeed, it’s nice to be able to set a third via point in the search and see the route on the map, so if you can spare the extra 15 seconds or just have the link bookmarked, ÖBB’s search takes the win. Both sites use the same timetable database.
It sounds like it’s easier to sustainably travel in the old world.
Container ship? The ship would be bringing cargo regardless, so your carbon contribution would be negligible.
With basic sailing skills you could probably crew on a sailboat delivery across the Atlantic. I don’t think many leave from Canada or even the NE US, so low carbon would be to take a train farther South. Maybe Annapolis but more likely Florida. Look up the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, they have a return rally in May-ish. A lot of boats will be sailing East at that time.
If you want to sail, volunteer as crew on a cruiser during a crossing
International travel is very difficult to do. You might be better off flying and looking to pay a certified company to offset your emissions.
A ViewMaster with slides of Europe. Practically leaves no footprint.
Whelp I guess everyone is going to stay in their towns and look at pictures.
@Sunshine If you want to have the absolute most sustainable way, then yes, get a slideshow of pictures of Europe that you like and look at them from the comfort of your house. If you would rather look for a way that is also convenient, look for the shortest route of flight between continental America and continental Europe and travel by train outside these (and bike in the city). I’m not really sure which one would it be, though.
I know around Europe there are some travel operators that offer passenger berths on commercial shipping lines. Maybe there are also some trans-Atlantic options?
You probably get a small room, and it’s not luxurious. But compared to the literal hundreds tons of cargo on board your carbon footprint is probably minuscule.You also get a unique experience about life on board, so that’s worth something as well :)
I had an acquaintance who travelled from Amsterdam to Helsinki this way. She was very positive about the experience.Though you will have to arrange two separate trips which might be a bit more complicated. Cargo vessels don’t stay in port long enough for you to enjoy a full vacation.
Unless you’re planning a small, well-trained crew, endurance sail that’ll take a few weeks, you’re probably talking one of those huge cruiseliners (that still take between one and two weeks).
Those things burn so much fuel it’s ridiculous. And it’s heavy oil, so more pollution than cars or planes.
I’m not sure on my figures here so definitely double check, but last I read about it, a transatlantic cruise would burn 3-4 times the amount of fuel as the equivalent passenger flights, whilst taking 20x the time
Thank you for the comment.
