Cambridge Letter

For me, it was an exciting experience and as I was not paying, a most enjoyable one! Like most of my student contemporaries, I was exploring various employment opportunities, and was going to a selection board run by a company whose headquarters was in Scotland. A small group of students had been called to the selection board, and we were due to travel by train — as everyone would have expected. Then a strike began on the railways and the company arranged for us to fly.

The experience was not only exciting, but also relaxed. Booking in at the airports — much smaller than they are now — was easy. There were no problems about what you could take on board.

During the next 10 years or so, having become a journalist, I flew frequently, mainly to Africa. Airports, of course, steadily increased in size. Aircraft, too, became bigger, and flew more quickly, which was a good thing when one was travelling long distances. Since then, like many people, I have flown a great deal, to destinations as varied as Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan and the United States, as well as many African countries. The experience has become steadily less agreeable. Sitting in airport lounges is not the most pleasant way to spend one’s time. Security procedures — necessary, undoubtedly — are often stressful. For me, flying is no longer fun, and in that I am not alone.

This week my wife and I have travelled to the north of Scotland, to the main island of Orkney, where I am writing this. The purpose, of course, is not to attend a selection board but to enjoy a short holiday in a part of the U.K. which we have never previously visited. Our journey has been by train and, for the final section, by ferry. And how pleasant that has been. By contrast to flying, train travel is much more comfortable than it was half a century ago. Entering and leaving the stations is straightforward: no security obstacles to negotiate. If you want to take exercise on the journey, it is much easier walking up and down the train than an aircraft. It is true that there is no longer the glamour of hissing steam locomotives to add excitement as you wait in the station, but our trains ran smoothly, and on the main part of the journey, fast.

On the final section, first along the north coast of the Scottish mainland, then over huge areas of moorland, progress was much slower. The coastline is a mass of inlets, and the train stops at every station. They are small, and some of them are request stops, for passengers who have told the train attendant that they want to get out at one of them. On holiday the slow and interrupted journey is no disadvantage. We are not commuters rushing to work, and are more than happy to enjoy the scenery.

When I was young, the relatively few people who owned cars often used them only on special occasions. “Taking the car out” was something one did at the weekend for a treat. Over the years, that changed and for many the car became the essential means of travelling to work, and the obvious means for travelling on holiday, if you were not flying.

Crowded roads have taken much of the pleasure out of “taking the car out”, just as inhospitable airports have taken much of the fun out of flying. Train travel for pleasure, as distinct from the grim business of commuting to work on crowded trains, went out of fashion. Indeed, in some quarters, the received wisdom was that railways had had their day. Certainly, many of the younger generation have rarely experienced train travel.

The current rapidly rising cost of oil, added to the other disadvantages of travel by road and air, may cause many people to look again at the received wisdom. Perhaps more may change their holiday travel habits, as my wife and I have begun to do. The change may prove to be more positive than a reaction to disadvantage. It may encourage us to reflect: “What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand (or perhaps in this case, sit) and stare?”

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