Vitesse

SLUMPING into the cramped confines of my seat , recovering my composure after a frantic, protracted check-in thaht made me mislay my waller, almost miss my flight, and become e100 poorer, the result of my experiment in travel seemed obvious : boats and trains beat the pains of planes any day.

But the real problem with air travel is not the carbon footprint, the hassle of security checks, the tedium of the boarding gate.. (or) the soulless sprawl of the hire car lot.. The deeper issue is that how we travel reflects and shapes the way we think, and we have become a society of airheads.

I started thinking about this because of a recurring desire to recreate an annual childhood journey by ferry and overnight train to visit our family in northern Italy. Was it just nostalgia pulling me, or is something of real value lost at 30,000 ft? I decided to go to Italy the old way and return the new, to see how the experiences really compared.

The passenger terminal at Dover docks did not provide the most promising start, having all the charm of a 1970s coach station. But once on deck, with the white cliffs fading into the distance, I had a real sense of a proper trip starting, something that the palm-sweat-inducing jolt of take-off doesn't provide. The sedare passage of the ship, the gradual emergence of the French coast, and the disembarkation in the open air, with a real town in clear sight, provided a sense of the continuities between places. In contrast, planes simply transport you from one anonymous, homogenous edgeland to another, between airports virtually identical in their black and yelow signage and multinational franchises. It's the difference between travel - a move

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