Europe Family Adventure 2026

What We Discovered When We Slowed Down……

Sixteen days. Five countries' worth of scenery, if you count the ones we simply rolled through. One overflowing family group chat full of half-remembered French verbs, ticket screen grabs, pintxos photos, potential recommendations and a 12 page powerpoint itinerary no one looked it ( if I had a £1 for every time I was asked what time is the train and how long is the journey I would definitely be retiring!).

This summer, my family and I swapped the usual airport-to-resort routine for something slower: a train and coach journey across Europe with my family, from London all the way down to the Algarve. You can catch my stories on Instagram should you wish but here's the fuller story of what 16 days on the ground taught us.

Watching the Country Change Outside the Window

There's a particular kind of geography lesson you only get from a train window. Leaving London, the Kent countryside gives way to the tunnel, and you surface into France somewhere near Calais, flat farmland stretching out under a different quality of light heading onwards to the bustle of the Paris streets. By the time the Bordeaux train pulled out of Paris Montparnasse, vineyards had started appearing in neat, sunbaked rows alongside fields on sunflowers. Crossing into Spain at Hendaye, the Basque coastline opened up, green hills dropping straight into the Atlantic, nothing like the postcard version of "sunny Spain" most of us grow up picturing.

You don't get any of that from 35,000 feet. Flying edits a continent into a cloud coverage and small glimpses of what could be ‘down there’. Travelling overland, the landscape does the storytelling for you and by the time you arrive somewhere, you already understand a little of why it looks and feels the way it does because you have experienced the journey.

Thirteen Kilos and a Lesson in What You Actually Need

A detail that surprised even us: our youngest daughter, who under normal circumstances would happily fill an entire suitcase for a long weekend, packed her whole trip into 13kg. No wheelie case. No last-minute "just in case" pile. When every bag has to be carried by you up station steps, swapped between trains with a tight connection, and hauled onto a coach yourself, you get remarkably honest about what you actually need. Laundry sheets and a washing machine at the Airbnb also helped here.

It turns out that constraint is its own kind of freedom. Nobody missed the extra shoes. Everybody appreciated the lighter shoulders.

Pintxos, Small Cafés, and Eating Our Way Through the Route

If you want to understand a place, eat where the locals eat and slow travel gives you the time to actually find it. San Sebastián was the standout: wandering the old town's bar-lined streets, plate-hopping between pintxos, small, perfect mouthfuls of Basque cooking, each one different, each one better than the last was one of the best meals of the entire trip, and it happened entirely on foot, a short stroll from our apartment and the station.

Further down the line, it was the small, unremarkable-looking cafés that delivered the real memories, the ones you'd never book in advance, just wander into because the coffee smelled right and there was a free table. A pastelería near Madrid Atocha. A tiny counter in Seville where nobody spoke English and everybody was patient with us anyway- yes my kids laughed a little but what they saw was their mum not being defeated – I got this!

Dusting Off GCSE French and Spanish

Smaller stations and coach terminals don't come with the multilingual signage and hovering staff of an international airport. Buying tickets at a rural Topo station, asking for directions in Seville, working out a platform change in rapid French, negotiating a bus replacement service at 5.30am this is where a decade-old GCSE suddenly earns its keep. It wasn't always elegant. It was always worth it. There's a particular kind of pride in successfully asking a stranger for help in their own language and actually understanding the answer.

No Passport Queues, No Chaos- Just The Journey

One thing that genuinely surprised us: border crossings were a non-event. Walking from the main Hendaye station to the small Topo platform to cross into Spain took a matter of minutes, no queue, no scanning, no stress. Every connection across the whole route, Paris to Bordeaux, Bordeaux to Hendaye, Madrid to Seville, Seville to Faro, ran pretty much to time with the only issue the bus replacement service between San Sebastián to Madrid via Zaragoza- what we learnt there was – actually we could have gotten a coach for the whole journey and saved approx. £150 and it would have been the same time if not quicker- lesson learnt! The whole journey had a rhythm to it: find the platform, find the seats, settle in, watch the country go by and loose at Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese Pizza ( if you know – you know!)

The Real Souvenir: Time Together

Flights are efficient in one sense and rushed in every other. A two-hour flight barely gives you time to settle before you're being asked to put your tray table up. A six-hour train journey, by contrast, is six hours of nothing to do but talk, play cards, read, people-watch, and occasionally strike up a conversation with whoever's sharing your table seats. Some of our best conversations as a family happened somewhere between Bordeaux and the Spanish border. Some of our favourite travel stories came from strangers we only spent an afternoon with a family on their way to Biarritz, American tourists laughing at my eldest as she slept as our tour boat passed the Eiffel Tower and she missed the whole thing! All of us trading recommendations, stories and warnings about the trip ahead. I have never experienced this in an airport lounge.

The Numbers Behind the Story

As a co founder of a business built on sustainability, of course we tracked the impact but the honest truth is the carbon saving was never the sole reason to do it this. It was simply a very welcome bonus to a trip we'd have chosen for the experience alone and would choose again.

Below are the stats- including a chartered catamaran (my families %), car hire and return leg  flights from Faro because sadly we didn’t have the holiday time to leisurely travel back.

Savings in carbon and costs for our summer 2026 European adventure CO₂e figures are modelled estimates using UK DEFRA 2026 conversion factors and route distance.

The trip we actually took saved 654kg of CO₂e and £1,342 compared with flying every leg. We feel this is genuinely good outcome. But if you asked any of us what we'd remember in five years' time, the answer wouldn't be a savings, it would be the value of the trip, pintxos in San Sebastián, a 13kg suitcase, a badly-pronounced but successfully understood pigeon French at a ticket counter, sunsets with friends, sunrises on coaches and hours of unhurried time with the people we love, watching a continent go by outside the window. I’m now off to plan our next adventure……………..