Train Versus Flight: An Essay by Penelope Farmer

What  perversity it must seem…. brief flights to Seville from anywhere in the UK,  plus another hour’s  ride to Alájar and Posada San Marco mean  half a day’s travel at most, even allowing for the tedium of airports -  why take the train instead ? Why spend two whole days travelling through England, France and Spain - are we mad? Not exactly. Some of us simply prefer travelling that way, stopping off in Madrid or Barcelona en route - another definite bonus. 

Of course we can always claim virtue: trains pollute our planet much less than planes. Equally we can claim to hating airports. (We do.) And we  are equally ready to admit that it is easier for those of us who are retired, or who can work anywhere than it is for those whose holidays are limited by full time employment. So why waste your holiday spending four days back and forth to get there? - unless you are perverse enough to make the train journey the holiday in itself. As some of us do….sometimes. 

But if you do have time there are other reasons for taking the train: Spain itself is the real issue. A historian who taught me years ago said that once you crossed the Pyrenees you’ve reached not just another country but another world - a country  unlike any other part of Europe, in either history, politics or landscape. And to understand just how different it is - how big it is - how different,  brutal even, this is the way to go. The ride through France  has  its own anomalies not least gangs of flamingoes along the Mediterranean coast. But the differences of Spain are well, different, differences seen all the more easily these days given the wide sweep of travel, the vast swathes of country opened up by the mostly efficient  Ave trains. Not least you begin to feel  just how big Spain is - our country could fit into a  corner of it. Oh and you spend your travel time surrounded by Spaniards, not fellow tourists. Another way to feel you’ve reached their country too.

Travelling a mere two hours by air is like having a child by Caesarian section, having yourself ‘untimely ripped’ - how did a baby get there?  How did you? Arriving in Spain by air is another form of displacement, one you feel much less after undergoing a two day journey across an enormous country, in the company of people who belong to it. Some differences are revealed of course no matter how quick or slow your journey. Walk into the heavenly garden in Posada San Marco in late April is to confront a hillside of cork oaks, hear frogs and nightingales duetting loudly,  only a short hike leading to the main village square with its tapas bars and rotating cast of local extras. Above all there’s the outsize  church towering over the village showing everyone who is - or used to be  boss, just like in Catholic Ireland. All this is telling. But you haven’t looked for Don Quixote while speeding across La Mancha,  a bleak plain, cold in winter, sweltering in summer everything burnt dry unless irrigated by wing-wide machines. You haven’t seen the multiple  wind farms or the acreages of solar  farms or the industrial complexes in the middle of nowhere. You haven’t seen how these landscapes,  unlike many American ones which stay the same for 100 miles, keep changing all the time. Wide fields that wouldn’t know what a hedge is are interspersed with little valleys and pointed hills, with attempts at smallholder cultivation. Long white paths begging to be walked on lead this way ahead and that.  Animals  sometimes appear, sheep mostly,  scrubby woods alternate with empty acres of cultivation. Above all though,  mostly beyond  La Mancha, are miles of pine nut umbrellas trees, or walnut or apple trees or vineyards in tidy undulating rows, while further south, heading towards the hills of Andalusia oceanic sweeps of olive trees begin to take over, and you cease to find yourself to looking out for modern Don Quixotes riding some ancient nag or mule, you look for fields of fighting bulls instead (in vain, until the road ride up from Seville.) 

But one thing never changes. Whether in narrow little valleys or wide open, arid plains, the smallest and meanest of villages not much more than hamlets sometimes, are, just like Alájar,  topped by enormous churches dating from the days of the Inquisition, crushing everyone beneath its priests and nuns, its bells and altars. 

Spain has a history of  cruelty in so many ways. But it’s also a magnificent and fascinating  country. The journey through it is just as  magnificent  and when you wake up in a village in the hills, like Alájar, it is thanks to Ave and a two day ride that you have a much better idea how you - and Spanish history -  arrived there. 

**Stop Press. In these time of potential fuel shortages and ongoing bureaucracy at EU borders,  trains can have the odd  advantage over planes. Unlike airlines, rail companies will not need to cancel journeys. Also, judging by our recent experience, French and English border teams, both,  at St Pancras (London) or Gare de Nord (Paris) are now processing passengers so quickly and efficiently that even on the busy April Saturday on which we left the UK, we were not advised to arrive at the station any earlier than the usual hour before our train was due to leave. And it was, too, more than time enough.