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There is a flight from Porto to the Basque coast that takes a little over an hour. I have taken it. I remember the security queue, a coffee in a paper cup and nothing else. This autumn I made the same trip over five days by train and bus, and I remember almost all of it.
This is not a piece about carbon, though that is part of it. It is about what we lose when the space between two places shrinks to a gate number, and what you get back when you let it grow again.
The route, leg by leg
Northern Iberia is not built for fast overland travel. The lines are slow, some cross-border links are thin, and on one stretch a bus beats the train. That is the point, and also the problem.
| Leg | Mode | Roughly | Night |
|---|---|---|---|
| Porto to Vigo | Cross-border regional train | 2.5 hours | Vigo |
| Vigo to Santiago de Compostela | Regional train | 1 hour | Santiago |
| Santiago to Oviedo | Long-distance bus | 4.5 to 5 hours | Oviedo |
| Oviedo to Santander | Narrow-gauge coastal train | 4 to 5 hours, with a change | Santander |
| Santander to San Sebastián | Bus, or train via Bilbao | 3 to 4 hours | Arrive |
The narrow-gauge leg along the Cantabrian coast is the slowest train I have ridden in western Europe and the one I would repeat first. It stops at villages with two houses and a cow, runs beside river mouths at walking pace, and fills with schoolchildren at four o’clock.
What the slow version cost
For one person, rounded, in autumn.
| Item | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| Trains and buses, all five legs | 75 to 95 euros |
| Four nights in simple guesthouses | 260 to 320 euros |
| Food, mostly bakeries, markets and set lunches | 120 euros |
| Total | about 455 to 535 euros |
The flight would have cost perhaps a third of that, plus a taxi each end. On price alone the plane wins. The comparison only shifts when you count what the slow version contains: four towns, a cathedral square at night in Santiago, cider poured from above the head in Oviedo, and a whole afternoon of coastline I would never otherwise have seen.
What we gave up, honestly
Stopping short-haul flying is not free. We lost weekend trips: a city break that was two nights now needs four days, or does not happen. We lost spontaneity, because overland routes reward planning. We lost money on a few journeys where the train was simply more expensive. And there are days on a slow regional train, stuck behind a freight delay with no café car, when the gate number looks very appealing.
What we got back
A sense of distance. You feel the landscape change from granite to green hills to the first Basque farmhouses. You notice accents shift, bread change shape, the light soften. Arriving in San Sebastián on the fifth evening, I knew exactly how far I was from Porto, because I had watched every kilometre of it go by.
We still fly, occasionally, for long distances where there is no real alternative. But for anything under a day’s travel overland, the plane now has to argue its case. It rarely wins.