TV’s Liver Birds were chatting in one episode and Beryl had been out on the Sunday cycling with her new boyfriend. They’d headed at Tour de France speed to an unusual location, and so Sandra asked, “What did you do in wherever it was they went?” to which Beryl replied, groaning, “A U-turn.” She’d not be pursuing that boyfriend.
According to this article, it’s far cheaper to fly from Brussels to Barcelona than to train it. The reasons are many. Flight competition is keen. Deregulation means airlines have to keep their competitive wits about them. But they get lots of subsidies, they don’t charge VAT on flight tickets, and they pay no excise duty on aircraft fuel. But they pollute.
Trains pollute as well, are organised as state monopolies or corporate oligopolies but, on the whole, pollute less than aircraft. If we had to choose on a pollution basis whether to go from Brussels to Barcelona by air or rail, we’d choose rail. In terms of grammes of CO2 per passenger kilometre, trains pollute far less than aircraft. Cars pollute more than trains, but less than aircraft. However, if we had to choose on a speed basis, the aircraft win. Then trains. Then cars. If we had to choose based on cost, the winner is aircraft. Then cars. Then trains.
Not one of them wins outright on all three considerations, all of which play a big role in the choices made by ordinary members of the travelling public. If we all chose the method that meant most to us (no pollution, cheap cost, fast journey), I reckon that all three would be viable alternatives from here on in, to the end of time. And which of them we chose might have a role to play in when precisely the end of time is.
But, what if speed is relative, cost spread over several days and the pollution is within reason, say, because you take a friend with you?
From Leuven to Barcelona is 1,400 km and takes 16 hours by road. Probably more in my old jalopy. I tend to drive that bit slower (except when starting off from the traffic lights). It gives you the time to look around you and enjoy scenery, stop for picnics and it reduces stress. (At traffic lights, I’ve already looked around me and I know where the handbrake and accelerator are by now.) Easy driving means you’re not hastening to get to where you’re headed; you’re in a mindset that says, “Relax. Enjoy the ride.”
The petrol for the trip would cost me 225 euros. The time taken would be around three days. I could camp. I could take a small bed & breakfast or hôtel garni. The speed could be important: what do I want to do with the time after I arrive in Barcelona? Will I be pressed? Will I have appointments? Will Barcelona be the goal, and all that lies between me and Barcelona be irrelevant? These will affect how quickly I want to get to Barcelona. But I’m not a fire engine: I don’t need to get there with bells sounding and lights flashing.
The reason I know it’s 1,400 km from Leuven to Barcelona is because I asked the Apple Map app how far it is. The app gives me directions to get there and, truth told, it’s pretty much a straight line.
The directions made me curious: A faster route is available with tolls. Route crosses international borders. Directions begin at closest open road. Walking required to reach destination.
Of the three routes offered, one involves no toll roads. When one choogles along a road at 90 to 100 kph, the attraction of a smooth, well-maintained highway offering heady speeds of 130 kph for a princely toll tends to recede, so the 16-hour option without tolls beckons. I am up-to-date enough to know that a journey from Belgium to Spain crosses international borders, thank you. I’m not entirely sure what the closest open road is to Leuven, but I will certainly try my best to find it. What really intrigues me is walking required to reach destination. Do they mean walking to the car, or walking to the toilets on the road to have a rest stop? No, they mean walking to the destination, which they’ve picked as being a square at the end of Carrer de Jaume I. To which no vehicular traffic is admitted. The road to Barcelona is a long one to walk, but cannot be completed without walking, since they measure it from a pedestrian zone.
That might sound obvious. Many city centres are pedestrian zones these days. So, it makes sense that, to get to the end of the line they drew between Leuven and Barcelona, you’ll have to get off your horse and hoof it yourself on Shanks’ pony.
Barcelona railway station (called Barcelona Sants) is only 23 minutes away at Plaça dels Països Catalans, down Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Whether your timing to Barcelona were taken as being to the square at the end of Carrer de Jaume I or to Plaça dels Països Catalans, the one can safely be said to be located within shouting distance of the other. Barcelona airport is a slightly other matter. It is fully 25 minutes away from Plaça dels Països Catalans, assuming that when you arrive there you will step out into a taxi. Without the intervening encumbrance of having to kiss the Earth, like a pope would. Or shake the hands of awaiting dignitaries, as Mr Zelenskiy would. Or queue up at immigration and customs as an American would. Or be strip searched as a Colombian or Mexican would. Or be sent to Bibby Stockholm, as an Ethiopian would. I often wonder whether flight arrival times are the time at which the airline reckons the aeroplane’s wheels will touch Mother Earth, its pilot will turn off the fasten seat belt sign, you are reckoned to actually step onto your destination’s territory, you will clear immigration, you will clear customs, or you will emerge from customs into the beaming faces of an expectant crowd of children, well-wishers, wives and besuited chauffeurs bearing unpronounceable names of visiting businesspersons on hastily scribbled bits of card and paper. The time taken for all these formalities is safely the time it would take to saunter from Carrer de Jaume I to Plaça dels Països Catalans, should the wont take you.
However, Leuven is not itself on the air network (yes, indeed, we have no air here), and its nearest connection to an airport that would take you cheaply to Barcelona is in Brussels. South Brussels, to be precise. Very south Brussels. Well, okay, it’s in Charleroi, which is 85 km and an hour’s drive away from Leuven. And from Brussels, for that matter.
There is only one thing that beats a bargain flight from Brussels South to Barcelona Josep Tarradellas, and that is driving the trajet. Pyrenees can be flown over but nothing will ever beat the majesty of driving through or around them. France is dotted with sites of historical charm and interest, and a three-day journey from Leuven to Barcelona could easily turn into a week, and still not be long enough. We so often complain that a holiday isn’t long enough, but rarely that the journey to get to where we want to spend it is too short.
When I worked in tourism in the 1980s, many kind American travellers I had the pleasure to accompany pressed phone numbers and addresses into my hands and said, “If you come to the US, come to us.” I did in 1985, and was a total of six weeks in America and Canada, only 18 nights of which I spent in hotels (17, actually: I slept in the car in Grand Canyon, and was awoken by the police who wanted to know that I was okay. An hour later, the sun came up over the rim of the Canyon and I praised the Lord that I had not slept through it.)
On that journey, I arrived at Chicago, where my hostess showed me Fields, Wrigley, Buckingham, Water Tower, Lake and softball. I departed the city at sunset on a weekday evening, on a train baptised the Southwest Chief. It wended its way slowly across America, the rail equivalent of Route 66, all the way to Los Angeles Union Station. This time, too, I slept in my conveyance, in a comfortable bedroom compartment all to myself, with commentary from the guard over an intercom system in daylight hours. I shared experiences and tales with other travellers in the dining car and in the observation cupola, and it was fond farewells that were said when we finally pulled into Los Angeles. “What an ethereal light there is over this city,” I remarked to one of my companions as we pulled over White Water and across the gap in the Sierra Nevada at Riverside. “That’s not ethereal light,” came the reply, “That’s the smog.”
People don’t take the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles in order to go from Chicago to Los Angeles. They take the Southwest Chief because it goes from Chicago to Los Angeles. It takes three calendar days—sunset on day one till 7 am on day three. You travel in the black dark for two nights and see as good as nothing. But the sun setting over the skyscrapers of Chicago and the thrill of seeing the Midwest as if from a stagecoach or a caboose trailed behind The General, along with the ethereal aura of Los Angeles’s morning smog down the San Bernardino gap, mean that, by not flying, you at least know something of what lies between Chicago and LA. Besides, that is, a road beloved of Harley-Davidson fanatics.
Image: The Rand McNally road map of the US, showing the state of Illinois, and a video record of the trail followed by the Southwest Chief. By the author.
You can fly from Brussels to Los Angeles in the time it takes to drive from Leuven to Barcelona. If being in Los Angeles is your goal, then it’s a time-saver. No hours will be frittered away whilst dawdling down country byways or with craning at towering Pyrenean peaks. You won’t need to stop for a rest, for resting is what you’ll do on your conveyance, and you will take all your waste with you as you soar into the clouds, depositing your aircraft’s own waste into them.
But, if being somewhere and appreciating somewhere, wherever that might be, is rather your goal, then the choice of driving to Barcelona beckons, with significantly more attraction than staying at home. Unless, that is, Los Angeles is home.