Tour specific travel advice to cut carbon emissions – for your tour starting in Fiesch
The Eagles now has a target to emit net zero carbon from its activities within two full seasons, by cutting emissions by swapping from air to train, for example; and by offsetting. We estimate current net emissions from tours to be 280 tonnes/year after offsetting. (To keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees by 2100, each person should emit on average no more than 1.5 tonnes per year.) If you would like to help reach the club’s target, there are two main things you can do:
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Offset your travel (by whatever mode) by buying from the Club’s emissions offset scheme at a cost of around £3.50 for an average return flight within Europe and less for other modes.
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Choose lower emission mode(s) of transport for all or part of your trip. (Taking a direct flight from say Edinburgh to Munich then continuing to Innsbruck by train, instead of taking connecting flights, will still cut emissions. Or travel by train in one direction and plane the other.)
Per passenger, the rough CO2 emissions for a return from London to Geneva are as follows
Direct flight, Economy Class 400kg
Large car, 4 passengers 160kg
Small car, 4 passengers 80kg
Coach 50kg
Train (e.g. Eurostar ) 25kg
(Source of data: here)
This document gives a few tips on booking lower carbon travel to the start point of your tour, Fiesch, from London.
Train. Fiesch is 10-12 hours by train from London St Pancras, with changes in Paris (from Gare du Nord to Gare du Lyon, using one fast metro line; tickets from the Eurostar buffet), Basel or Lausanne, and Brig. For train (and in Germany and Switzerland also local bus) times see www.bahn.co.uk (DB) – just enter origin London, or your local GB station, and your final destination.
Eurostar does not offer through London-Lausanne tickets. You can buy a ticket to Paris on www.eurostar.com, and another onwards from Paris to Lausanne or Basel at the French railways page www.oui.sncf.com. Booked well ahead Eurostar charge around £60 for a single from London to Paris and SNCF charge about the same for a single from Paris to Lausanne or Geneva. A buy-on-the-day single from Lausanne to Fiesch costs 28CHF at www.sbb.ch or as little as 14CHF, booked ahead. Equivalent fares from Basel to Fiesch are 47CHF and 39CHF.
Eurostar and German Rail (DB) tickets go on sale 6 months in advance and SNCF 4 months. More train travel info at https://www.eagleskiclub.org.uk/plan-your-trip/low-carbon-travel/train-travel-tips-and-hints.
Bus. You can travel overnight from London to Paris and then onwards to Lausanne in a total of about 17 hours and for around £50, booking ahead at www.flixbus.co.uk
Car. The Michelin route planner www.viamichelin.com suggests a drive time from London to Fiesch of 12 hours, a distance of 1080 km/670 miles and tolls of €57 (plus Swiss vignette, 40CHF for a year) one way. It also calculates fuel costs for your car, though not Euroshuttle. A motorway payment tag can be convenient – see www.bipandgo.com – but prices are the same as cash or card.
Carshare. If concerns about COVID reduce, you might want to consider Blablacar, the carsharing app. You pay for a lift – details at www.blablacar.com. If driving, register your trip details to get paying passengers – e.g. €70 for Calais-Lyon. It is heavily used in France and Spain.
Travelling from outside London? Apologies if this info all seems a bit London-centric but pretty much all rail and bus travel from the UK to the continent is via London, though when driving, the Hull-Zeebrugge or Newcastle-Amsterdam ferries may be a good (although carbon intensive) alternative to Euroshuttle. By train, it is possible to return as far north as Edinburgh in one day from some stations in the western Alps (Modane, for example; or from Zurich), though more difficult on the outward due to the time difference. See www.bahn.co.uk.