Friday open thread: memorable journeys

[dolorosa_12]

These Friday posts are making a tentative return. We'll see how long I can maintain the momentum.

I've got journeys and transport on the brain at the moment due to my summer of train travel, and that's what's sparked today's prompt:

What are some of the most memorable journeys you've undertaken? I'm not asking about the destination, I mean the journey itself, by any mode of transport.



Trains are far and away my favourite form of transport (other than my own feet ... or my own arms and legs, I guess, since swimming is technically a form of transport that I enjoy), so I guess it's unsurprising that train journeys are my most memorable. The one which always sticks in my mind is that from Bergen to Oslo in Norway — six hours through the most incredible, snow-covered mountains, little houses with roofs covered in grass, and just this endless sweep of magnificent land and sky.

I don't particularly enjoy travelling by car, so weirdly my most memorable car journeys are the ones that happened so frequently in my childhood that they became habitual, and memorable because they caused me to remember every contour in the land, every twist and turn in the road: the three-hour trip between Sydney and Canberra, the winding route down the mountains from Canberra to the NSW south coast, my endless trips back and forth from my high school to my house, to my gymnastics club, to my piano teacher's house, and so on.

I don't think I travel enough by boat to have much to choose from here, but nothing beats a journey across Sydney Harbour in a ferry.

In contrast I travel too much on foot (both just walking around in my daily life, and on hiking trips) to ever be able to narrow things down to the most memorable journey.

My memorable plane trips are all memorable for the wrong reasons...

Comments

[regshoe]

Taking the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Fort William last summer! The train was delayed overnight; I woke up somewhere in Cumbria and we spent the rest of the morning travelling across Scotland through increasingly dramatic and lovely scenery, peacefully watching out of the window of our comfortable private room. Despite the delay it was pretty much the nicest rail journey I've ever been on. :)

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, that sounds absolutely amazing! It sounds as if the delay meant that you were able to see things at a more optimal time of day, rather than passing through them when you were asleep.

[nerakrose]

I have several memorable train journeys (also my favourite way to travel!) of which the most memorable is probably Glasgow to Fort William (and back) in 2019. stunning autumnal highland landscapes the whole way. on the same trip I did a steam train ("hogwarts express") trip from Fort William to Mallaig and back, which was very fun and a beautiful trip but the train itself was very uncomfortable so now that I've done that, another time going to Mallaig I'm taking the normal train. :D

I went to Cardiff the other week and spotted the Uffington White Horse from the train on the way there, that was also utterly delightful :)

I have gone by car from Oslo to Bergen (in 1998) on a family trip and I remember it very well, it was during the summer and the scenery was wonderful. at times I was very annoyed there were so many trees because often I couldn't see the scenery for the trees!! it was very 'ten year old child who grew up on iceland and has seen 5 trees in their life is now annoyed they can't see the mountains for trees', lol.

all my ferry trips have been memorable for the simple reason that I've been seasick on every single one of them. I hate travelling by ferry - it often is very convenient and a cheaper alternative to flying, and I do like being outside on the deck and watching the sea and whatever landscape passes by, but all the rest of it is awful. given how seasick I get I don't make the choice to travel by ferry lightly when I do make it. (and I'm actively looking into ferry connections to Europe atm for going home for Christmas because I don't want to fly but I also don't want to pay an arm and a leg for the Eurostar when it's neither cheaper nor more convenient than flying; I still have to turn up early and go through security and once I add that time on the journey time, I've taken the same bloody time getting to Amsterdam as it would flying, but it cost more. so might as well do the slower but cheaper thing with the ferry. if only there were decent ferry connections...still mourning the Harwich-Esbjerg route, and it's been dead ten years.)

[dolorosa_12]

The train trips you mention sound absolutely beautiful! It really is the best way to travel.

I have gone by car from Oslo to Bergen (in 1998) on a family trip and I remember it very well, it was during the summer and the scenery was wonderful. at times I was very annoyed there were so many trees because often I couldn't see the scenery for the trees!! it was very 'ten year old child who grew up on iceland and has seen 5 trees in their life is now annoyed they can't see the mountains for trees', lol.

This anecdote is adorable!

I've travelled by ferry from Wales to Ireland but I've never done cross-Channel ferry trips. My in-laws always do, but the ferry connections between the Netherlands (they live in Germany fairly close to the Dutch border) and the UK are better than the options you have available.

Admittedly with Eurostar you don't have to show up as early as you would do with a flight, and the train stations are in the city centre rather than on the fringes as airports are, and security is less (just metal detectors, you can take liquids in any volume, don't have to remove laptops etc), and of course you have your bags with you at the other end, so everything is ultimately a bit quicker than in an airport, but it is a lot more expensive, as you say, and it's not so much more convenient that the cost is justified.

[nerakrose]

yes, harwich-hook of holland is top of my list of options to cross the channel. I've done amsterdam-newcastle (overnight ferry) and it was fine, and perfect since I was going to scotland, except I think I was the only person on the whole ship who was seasick. :''D

I've always wanted to try to travel on the orient express - I've heard that part of the route is going to get shut down, which makes me sad because it looks like I won't be able to do the whole route at all before it vanishes altogether.

[dolorosa_12]

I've always wanted to try to travel on the orient express - I've heard that part of the route is going to get shut down, which makes me sad because it looks like I won't be able to do the whole route at all before it vanishes altogether.

Oh no, what a terrible shame!

I hope you find a reasonable ferry option for Christmas.

[tellshannon815]

Well, after last week's shite with the bus being stuck on the A329M for two and a half hours and missing my connection to Brighton, I think that will be one I won't forget in a hurry. That, and the time my family got towed halfway across the country in a breakdown lorry when my grandad's car broke down in Lochgelly.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh no, both those trips sound horrendous! What terrible luck!

[sewn]

Trains are also my favorite mode of long-distance travel. I enjoy biking a lot, but haven't ever made a long biking treks.

My most memorable train trip, or one of them, was in 2015 when I went on Interrail in central Europe. I had planned my itinerary around music; I am a fan of Bob Dylan and wanted to catch a few of his gigs in Germany and Slovakia, plus I went to a festival in the Netherlands (mainly to see Dan Deacon, Bob wasn't playing). I never did Interrail as a teenager, but it was a wonderful experience as an adult as well, and I've since done it a couple of times, most recently in June this year. My first Bob trip included other things as well, touristy wandering around cities, renting a rowboat, just enjoying the sights. I actually started the journey with a bus ride through the Baltic countries and Poland, and think fondly of that part of trip too. It was interesting to see the "backyards of Europe." (It's now possible to take a bus all the way from central Finland to Warsaw, and I'm curious to try it.) All in all, I prefer to travel at a pace that leaves time for observation. I read somewhere that trains travel at the speed of your heart.

[dolorosa_12]

What a cool thing to have done! Interrailing is such a marvellous thing, and I'm glad your first experience was such a positive one. I'm really pleased that those bus connections exist as well, although I'm not sure I'd want to travel such distances by bus unless I really had no other option.

I read somewhere that trains travel at the speed of your heart.

I love this sentiment!

[windancer]

I would say, the first time I traveled by train in the United States. I had traveled by train in the UK and Europe as a teenager visiting, but US train travel is of course uhhhh not competitive, and other than the monorail at Disney World, I didn't have access to US train travel until I moved to New York about five years ago. Amtrak is very good in New York and the northeast (comparatively) and it's almost the same amount of time to drive to New York City from where I live upstate as to take the train.

The Hudson River where I live is fine, but it's huge downstate. Watching the river go by and change, and the landscape itself change as the train moved through the Catskill Mountains, for the first time was wonderful. The moments when New York City begins to appear. Going underground. And then all the train travel that came after, the local subway experiences. Magical! Even though I've done this trip many times now, and it's always very nice, that first trip will stay in my memory.

[dolorosa_12]

That train journey sounds absolutely wonderful! It's so good that you live in a part of the US where you have access to that form of transport, as — as you say — it's pretty patchy around much of the country, which is such a shame.

Your description of the landscape, and then the cityscape, is very evocative, and I can almost feel myself there!

[mific]

I've got two air trips and two train rides. All many years ago.
When I was a final year med student we had to do 3 months in a clinical post for experience - we had no choice where. I got back to Christchurch from holiday to find I had to be in Greymouth on NZ's west coast the next day. They'd booked me a flight which was in a small plane with just me and the pilot, who got me to sit in the co-pilot seat as we flew over the southern alps. I'm a white knuckle flyer so although the scenery was amazing, I spent much of the flight covertly watching what the pilot was doing in case he had a heart attack and I needed to fly the plane (he was in his fifties). So, memorable! (I didn't need to fly the plane).
A few years later I was travelling with my boyfriend from London to Delhi in the cheapest way possible. That was Air Afghan, and memorable points were: a mechanic outside whacking one of the plane's engines with a wrench as we queued to board. An old Afghani guy having a small kerosene stove confiscated from his hand luggage at check in. Presumably he didn't trust them to provide refreshments. Having to stash my boyfriend's guitar in the empty first class area, which turned out to be filled by large crates (guns?) tied down with chains. A stopover in Kabul where we watched MIGs overflying us. A stopover in Moscow where due to political tensions the plane was forced to park at the far side of the airport in the snow the whole time while refuelling, guarded by an armed truck, and no one was allowed off.
A train trip from Delhi to Madras - amazing scenery and fiercely hot breakfast omelettes with chickpea curry.
The sleeper train across the Nullarbor desert, Adelaide to Perth, on which I learned that nullarbor wasn't an Aboriginal word as I'd assumed, but meant null arbor - no trees. I also pointed out some big rabbits to a lady in my compartment at one point, who gave me an odd look and told me they were kangaroos. The distances were deceptive!

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, those all sound incredible, although as a fearful flyer, I don't envy you that flight to Greymouth. That must have been terrifying! And what a piece of history your flight to Delhi via Kabul was — no wonder it has remained in your memory.

I love the sound of both of those train trips, though — so wonderfully evocative. And you're not the only one to have that belated realisation about the name 'Nullarbor'. I'm Australian, and I only realised it wasn't an Aboriginal placename but rather Latin about two years ago — and I'm Australian and I can read Latin!

[got_quiet]

I love trains too and seek them out when I can. Been on a a few steam trains, though they are largely either loops our short tourist tracks. But I think my most memorable journey was a car ride. I was taking a brief jaunt through northern India to see the major Buddhist landmarks. I don't even remember which leg of the trip this was, but we set out in the early evening and it took us a few hours to reach our destination.

Indian traffic is kind of notorious. All laws are suggestions and things like lanes don't really exist. You honk constantly as a form of echolocation and a polite "I'm passing now" so it's very noisy. But that was relatively easy to get used to, and because the roads are bad no one is going particularly fast anyway. When it got crazy was when we got out of the city. We were driving through a dense fog. You could only see maybe ten feet ahead and the cars in front were practically shadows. The road was a two lane road, but everyone drove right down the center of it, which initially scared the bejezus out of me because we were constantly swerving to the right to avoid head on collisions. But we had to do this, because even in the middle of the country the sides of the road were full of people walking down the street, and there were no shoulders or pedestrian walkways, so driving in your lane would mean constantly running the risk of clipping a person or a cart or something. So here we are, speeding along at what felt like much faster clip than it probably was, in rapidly increasing darkness, in a fog that would put Silent Hill to shame, as random ass people and cars just popped up in front of us and our driver swerved around them with one hand on the wheel and the other in a tin of tobacco or betel or something like that.

I'm usually good at catching a nap in the jaunts between locations when traveling but I was white knuckled the entire drive.

One of the top items in my bucket list is to take the Orient Express from start to finish, but it will be some long while before that's possible, I feel.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, Indian traffic must take some getting used to (although I guess if it's what you've grown up with, it feels normal). That drive sounds amazing, and no wonder it was memorable for you — it's the sort of thing that would stick with you forever!

You're not the only person in the comments here to mention the Orient Express — that would be an amazing journey!