Why I escaped airport chaos and took the train from London to Morocco with my family

Lucy Johnson, HELLO!‘s Planet Positive Green Coach, journeyed from London to Morocco by train with her family last summer in a bid to tread more lightly on the planet.

With tourism impacting 8% of the world’s carbon emissions and airplane pollution contributing significantly to climate change, jet setters and sun seekers need no convincing of their responsibility to think mindfully about how we fuel our wanderlust.  

If you think the climate crisis is the end of travel, think again. We all need holidays. We need time away from the predictable routine of our everyday lives to rest, reset and dream. But how do we do that without taking a plane? Enter the new age of the train. 

In her first column for HELLO!, Lucy, founder of sustainable lifestyle consultancy Green Salon, writes of her epic journey from Europe to North Africa.

Travel Day 1: London St Pancras – Paris – Barcelona

​Dreaming of golden sands and crystal clear oceans, but not keen on tackling the summer holiday airport chaos? You’d have had to have spent your last few holidays flicking through the pages of an airline magazine to have missed the train renaissance occurring in Europe. Night trains to Stockholm. Overnight couchettes from Paris to Venice. Train travel is having its moment.

But what if you want to travel further afield? What if you have Morocco in your sights?

My family did. And so my husband and I found ourselves in the departure lounge of St Pancras with our two children, 11 and 14, at the beginning of their school holidays, heading to Paris for lunch. After all, when you travel by train Paris is the gateway to the world.

If the Gare du Nord is a grey and dilapidated north-facing way-stop in to Paris, the Gare du Lyon reorientates you towards the southern sun. Its best kept secret is the Train Bleue restaurant. With a morning train to Paris, we were there in plenty of time for a 3-course gourmet lunch before stepping on to the train to Barcelona. 

On the top story of the double-decker TGV, we sped through France, past the vineyards of the Rhone Valley, with its castellated chateaus, to the Etangs of the south, and its flocks of pink flamingos. Five hours later, we arrived in the fantastical capital of Catalonia. 

I’d been wanting to visit Barcelona and Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, the Sagarda Familia cathedral, for decades. So I figured that our two-week holiday could encompass Spain’s greatest artistic highlights as well as a trip to the Moroccan desert. 

Travel Day 2: Barcelona – Madrid – Algeciras

Barcelona didn’t disappoint. We spent a few days exploring the Mediterranean city, drinking in its fabulous architecture, before heading off on the train for Madrid. Our two children were delighted by the selection of in-train films while my husband and I let the ever-changing contours of the landscape melt away our mental to do lists. By the time we reached Madrid for lunch, my mind felt still and clear.

Madrid Atocha station’s in-the-know lunch spot is the vast tropical garden in the converted hall of the  original station. It’s not quite the Train Bleue but it’s a fountain of green with some passable cafes. A two-hour lunch stop and we were back on a slow train headed towards Algeciras on Spain’s south coast, in the shadow of Gibraltar.

The in-train entertainment was not up to much, according to the kids, but the landscape was. We passed Andalusia and in the last hour of the journey wove its way through winding valleys, thick with conifers, down to the coast. 

It’s from Algeciras that you see Africa. The ferry to Morocco from nearby Tarifa takes one hour and glides into Tangier’s old port. Not much has changed in the old port for hundreds of years. Above it all, rises the white facade of Tangier’s legendary Continental hotel. 

Tangiers reputation for seedy types dates back to the 1920s when it was a semi-independent international zone full of bohemian artists, shady foreigners and spies. Reabsorbed back into Morocco at independence, Tangiers slumped into neglect at the turn of the century and has now sprung back to become a bustling, tourist-friendly city.

Wandering through the maze of the Medina, the kids marvelled that the white-washed streets were just an arms-length wide in places. The ghosts of Tangier’s past could be found in the El Minzah hotel where we stayed. Hollywood’s golden generation: Rex Harrison, Rita Hayworth and Rock Hudson gazed down on us in black-and-white as we wandered through the hotel’s white-washed courtyards, fragrant with lemon blossom.

Travel Day 3: Tangier – Marrakech

A couple of days later, we stepped on to the overnight couchette to Marrakech. It couldn’t be described as deluxe, with just a couple of sheets and a pillow and, as my husband pointed out several times, nobody to serve you breakfast. But if, like me, you’re a bit of a romantic adventurer, nothing can beat speeding through the Moroccan night towards the desert on a sleeper train.

Arriving in Marrakech for breakfast, we felt the heat of the African sun as we drove out to the Stone Desert on the outskirts of the city. It may not have been the Sahara, but it’s vast lunar landscape and immense desert sky, had a stillness and a spaciousness that stopped the mind.

Scarabeo Camp’s canvas tents with their log burners, Berber rugs and ornate wash stands were like something out of that epic desert film, The English Patient. Everywhere we looked there were muted shades of ochre, sienna, cream and sand. The air had been washed clean by an overnight storm, revealing the snow-topped peaks of the High Atlas. 

The heat was not searing but the cool stone pool, surrounded by blue-grey cactus, was a welcome relief for the kids after we’d explored the deep wadis and hidden ravines around the camp. That night we ate a Moroccan feast served inside the tent away from the night chill and the songs of West Africa, of Youssou N’Dour and Salif Keita, were sung by a man with a voice like a rumbling desert storm.

We had arrived.

What was the carbon impact of travelling by train?

Travelling to Morocco by train rather than plane cut the carbon emissions of our outward journey by a staggering 93% and cost £1271 for the four of us. We flew home via EasyJet for £926. I worked out our travel itinerary through Man in Seat 61 that details train journeys around the world.