The Netherlands is one of our closest neighbours, and with three ferry routes and one direct train, it’s easy to access without flying.
Yet somehow London-Amsterdam is Europe’s busiest flight route.
This might be because Schiphol is a hub airport, so lots of connecting flights pass through it. But plenty of people do still fly to the Netherlands from the UK. Switching a flight to a train saves 96% on your emissions. By ferry (as a foot passenger) the savings are 88%. The journey is comfortable, enjoyable, easy and reasonably cheap.
We wake early: the ferry departs at 9am, check-in closes at 8.15am, and the train to the port takes an hour and twenty minutes. So at 6.20am we are already at London Liverpool Street, ready to board the 0630 Greater Anglia service to Harwich International.
We had considered staying over in Harwich and avoiding the painful early morning alarm, but we have bought a Rail and Sail ticket which is only valid on the same day as the sailing. Never mind, it’s worth it: £71.70 each for the train journey and the ferry, all the way from London to Hoek van Holland.
Rail and Sail is a great way to keep the cost down: prices start at £49, and that includes travel from any Greater Anglia station to the port as well as the ferry itself. An absolute bargain if you live anywhere near the east of England.
The biggest expenditure is time, though. It will take a full working day to travel across the North Sea: 9am departure, 5pm arrival. I worry that it’s too much of a commitment for my previously frequent-flying boyfriend. But he opens his laptop as soon as we’ve settled on the boat, and manages to do something resembling a day’s work using the ship’s wifi.
For my part I read, work, sleep and drink tea. I take a walk on deck in the blinding sunshine as the wind snatches my hair. There is a sun deck which is extremely warm; there are picnic tables for al fresco lunches. There’s even a basketball/football cage, covered with a net so errant balls don’t end up in the sea.
On board it’s comfortable, with plenty of plugs for our many devices. I’ve brought sandwiches, because ferry food, while tasty, feels extortionately expensive. At least the duty free is cheap: 1 litre of gin for €15! The weather is calm and the waves are gentle, which is a relief, as I’ve spent many a ferry journey with my head down the toilet. I pop a Kwells just in case – an essential addition to any traveller’s handbag.
5pm rolls around surprisingly quickly (of course it’s 4pm really, but now we’re on Europe time), and we disembark with the handful of other foot passengers, down the long slow slope of the walkway, and into the bright warmth of a late Dutch afternoon.
“Do we need a ticket for the bus?” I ask the man as he stamps my passport. “No, it’s all contactless now,” he replies. “The bus stop is right outside.”
Twenty minutes later we are rolling through the outskirts of town towards The Hague, Den Haag. Every road has a wide, two-way bike lane along one side, and people of all kinds are riding. No matter how many times I visit the Netherlands this always delights and surprises me. I wish we had been able to bring our own bikes, but Rail and Sail doesn’t seem to allow bikes anymore, and in any case, we’re returning by Eurostar, and jumping through the bike-booking hoops there was one logistic too far.
Apparently the beaches at The Hague are unbelievable, and we can’t resist the one called ‘Monster’, so we hop off the bus a bit early and head towards the dunes. The sand is endless. The water sighs onto the beach, the waves gently crashing, over and over. The beach bar could have stepped straight out of California with its palm trees and sand-covered wooden decking. It’s an unusually warm mid-September evening and we are in paradise.
We’ve come to The Hague so I can complete my Alphabet Parkrun: one parkrun for every letter of the alphabet. It started with Alexandra Park in Manchester in September 2022 and finishes two years later with Zuiderpark in The Hague. It’s my second overseas visit – the first to Jersey for J – in a project that has taken me from Sharpham in Devon all the way up to York, and many places in between. I have loved collecting all the letters, most of them within easy reach of London, but some requiring overnight stays on the hospitality of friends, or giving a good excuse for a weekend away.
The run goes well – it’s a sunny morning, and there are 167 runners, a mixture of Dutch and English. The route is twice around the park, on the long perimeter path beneath mature trees and past ponds and play areas. It’s a sprint finish to the line where I cross in 19th place to get a time of 21:12 – my first palindromic Parkrun time!
The Hague is charming. At least, I think it is – my boyfriend is less convinced. After my post-Parkrun shower we take the Metro straight to Den Haag Centraal station, where we leave our bags in a locker to be retrieved later. €7 to avoid a sore back (and looking like a tourist) – bargain.
There are enough waterways, narrow cobbled streets and outdoor cafes to provide a counter-narrative to the wide commercialised streets lined with shops, and the huge financial and governmental buildings, and to my mind it's all delightfully Dutch. We wander through a park, along a canal and past historic churches to a cafe that serves us breakfast pancakes in true Dutch tradition. Our visit is completed by the purchase of two quintessentially Dutch items. No, not those ones! A bicycle bell and some Hagelslag, of course.
Our return journey is via Rotterdam – another wonderful city with a lovely waterfront, great architecture and a vibrant buzz. The direct Eurostar is temporarily out of action while Amsterdam Centraal station gets an upgrade, so we have to disembark in Brussels and go through customs and passport control there, before getting back on a different Eurostar to complete our journey. It only adds about 45 minutes – which is about the same as if we’d done it in Amsterdam, so it evens out.
It feels a bit wrong that a 4-hour Eurostar should cost more than spending all day on a ferry, but we chose a lie-in over a bargain and picked the £100 tickets for a 3pm departure rather than the £39 tickets for 9.30am. Even close to departure, it’s possible to find cheap Eurostar seats – there’s a ‘cheap fare finder’ section on the website, so if you aren’t constrained by time or a preference for sleep, it gives some great options for those on a budget.
We arrive back in London to find that the last gasp of summer has finally passed, and the rain has come. It’s the start of a week-long period where violent downpours will cause heavy flooding up and down the UK, bringing untold misery to residents, farmers and travellers. It’s a timely reminder of how important it is to keep our emissions down.
A very effective and easy way to do that is to avoid flying. Luckily, with countries like the Netherlands on our doorstep, not flying doesn’t mean we have to give up our overseas adventures.
Emissions calculations for journey London-Amsterdam:
