words by Chloe Milne | photo by Pelayo Arbués
Everyone loves a bargain, but is it morally right to jetset and forget the impact cheap flights have on our planet? In this day and age, the world may be our oyster, but at what cost?
“How much can we fit into one day in Paris?”
“Four places you can’t miss in an afternoon in Lisbon.”
“12 hours in Amsterdam – £9 same-day return flights!”
Has anyone else been swarmed with information about extreme day trips? When I saw an Instagram post advertising flying to Spain for the day, arriving at 7am and leaving at 11pm, I didn’t even blink. If I’m honest, I actually considered it. Something about squeezing an entire trip into a day has captivated young people in the past few years, but are we starting to take it too far?
In today’s economic climate, the main reason behind extreme day tripping is obvious. Most people love a holiday, and absolutely everyone likes a cheap one. So it makes sense that young people are looking to jet off to new countries for a day or two for £27 rather than get the £160 7-hour train with three changes to a sleepy town in Cornwall. Having a railcard doesn’t even seem like much of a steal anymore; I travelled back and forth from London to Cardiff throughout university and I’d much prefer not knowing how much that set me back. Even though you can love your parents and hometown, it does feel like a stupid amount of money to spend in order to sleep in your childhood bedroom for a few weeks.
When my best friend proposed a £34 flight to Vienna for the weekend, however, it was an instant yes. Of course it was; I grew up knowing that my parents didn’t leave the country until they were eighteen, and that travelling is a privilege that, when you can, you should absolutely always say yes to.
After lockdown in 2020, “plane fares started dropping while hotel rates spiraled upward”, creating a trend of travelling back home before sundown to avoid paying to stay overnight. In a job market like today’s, it’s becoming less and less common to use all our annual leave in one go. If you want to see the world, it seems more appealing – and financially feasible – to do it little by little, throughout the year instead. Plus, it is much better for our mental health to escape the mundanity of corporate life more often and is the only way to truly get that work-life balance that companies are always boasting in their ‘perks’ section, all year long. If you plan your day trip right, you don’t even need to eat into your precious annual leave – so it’s no surprise that the ‘extreme day trip’ has soared in popularity.
We’ve established that everybody loves a bargain. But perhaps another reason why day-tripping has become so popular is because of its accessibility in other ways. The thought of travelling across Australia for a year and figuring out the logistics, planning the route, and researching the safest hostels is understandably intimidating for less daring or experienced travellers. Being able to explore a new place with no need to have the intel on where to store bags or how to use a compass, knowing that you can return to the safety of your own bed at the end of the day, is a huge plus. After flying to spend the day in Dublin, then Paris, and then Dubrovnik, maybe those travel newbies will feel more confident in planning some longer trips. To have a little taster of what adventure can be like is a safe way of deciding if that’s something we’re into or not. And for those experienced travellers… it must be nice not having to lug an enormous backpack around for months at a time and go to sleep knowing you can reliably have a hot shower in the morning.
A Facebook group named ‘Extreme Day Trips’ was created in 2022, sharing suggestions for cheap travel and the must-sees of each location. It’s quite adamant that posting about trips that last longer than one night is absolutely not allowed. As of today, the group has over 325k members. The timing of its creation was not a matter of chance. Remember when we couldn’t leave the country by law and the world came to a standstill? It’s no surprise that the popularity of extreme day trips peaked just after COVID-19 did. Humans are stubborn creatures. When the government told us we weren’t allowed to leave the country, that understandably made us want to leave it even more. As soon as the lockdown was lifted, I’d be willing to bet that the large majority of people went straight onto Booking.com to get the hell out of here as fast as possible. It’s like that children’s story – when something is taken away from us and we realise how much we missed it, we never take it for granted again. Even my least travel-bug friends were hopping on a plane in 2021, just because they could. Perhaps there is now a fear that our freedom could be taken away from us again at any moment, so we have to enjoy it whilst we can. And in that context, the good thing about day trips is that we’re less likely to be stranded in a foreign country if lockdown 2.0 ever comes knocking.
Everyone immediately jumped on the Taylor Swift hate train when it was revealed how much CO2 her private jet released. But when we see a one-hour flight to Scotland vs six hours by train, it’s a no-brainer. It’s become alarmingly easy to ignore our carbon footprint, with echoes of “but everyone is doing it!” ringing in our ears when we click ‘book’. The internet has manipulated us into thinking it doesn’t matter – we buy 3 sizes of a fast fashion dress online to get free shipping, only to return 2 because it’s easier than leaving the house. We order takeaways instead of cooking because there’s a deal on Deliveroo. The internet has made us more impatient than ever, always searching for the quickest and easiest way, which is usually at the cost of our poor planet.
Air travel is responsible for 2.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, rising to 8% in the UK. Taking multiple short-haul flights in a short space of time is one of the fastest ways to skyrocket our carbon footprint. Whilst the extreme day trip has its perks in a modern, fast-paced, and expensive world, we have to stop and ask ourselves: is it worth putting spontaneity over sustainability?