Tour specific travel advice to cut carbon emissions – for Norwegian tours
The Eagles now has a target to emit net zero carbon from its activities within two full seasons, by cutting emissions by swapping from air to train, for example; and by offsetting. At the moment, net annual emissions after offsetting from all our tours are 280 tonnes. (To keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees by 2100, each person should emit on average no more than 1.5 tonnes per year.) If you would like to help reach the club’s target, there are two main things you can do:
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Offset your travel (by whatever mode) by buying from the Club’s emissions offset scheme at a cost of around £3.50 for an average return flight within Europe and less for other modes.
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Choose lower emission mode(s) of transport for all or part of your trip. (Taking a direct flight from say Edinburgh to Munich then continuing to Innsbruck by train, instead of taking connecting flights, will still cut emissions. Or travel by train in one direction and plane the other.)
Per passenger, the rough CO2 emissions for a return from London to Geneva are as follows
Direct flight, Economy Class 400kg
Large car, 4 passengers 160kg
Small car, 4 passengers 80kg
Coach 50kg
Train (e.g. Eurostar ) 25kg
(Source of data: here)
For tours on the near continent, as far as Austria and Spain, tour-specific rail, bus, car and carshare travel advice has been prepared for each tour.
The 2023 tours to the Jotenheim, Skarvheim and Isfjorden are not impossible by train but you will need to buy tickets from a variety of providers: Eurostar to get to Brussels or Amsterdam, then a through ticket with www.bahn.co.uk from Brussels to Gothenburg (or possibly Brussels to Hamburg and then with www.sj.se from Hamburg to Gothenburg), then a ticket with Norwegian bus and train operator www.vy.no from Gothenburg onwards into Norway. Isfjorden is close to Andalsnes station, about 6 hours from Oslo, and Skarvheim tour starts at Finse which is about 4 hours from Oslo on the line to Bergen. The Jotenheim is easily reached by bus from Oslo. If you don't stop, the fastest journey time from London to Andalesnes is about 31 hours (on those days when the through Hamburg to Stockholm sleeper is running, which is not every day).
For other tours in Norway, journey times by any surface mode are so long that we have assumed that they are not attractive to most members. To give an idea, London to Trondheim (itself not so far north) by train will take you around 40 hours and a complex combination of Eurostar, German, Swedish and Norwegian tickets. By car it is 2500km and 24 hours. Places further north, like Tromso, are not accessible even from Oslo by bus and there is no railway line (or you have to go via Stockholm and eastern Sweden).
If you want to try an overland trip then by car the Michelin routeplanner www.viamichelin.com is very helpful, and for train/ferry combinations try the Man in Seat 61 https://www.seat61.com/Norway.htm
Otherwise, if you are going on a tour in Norway, please give strong consideration to offsetting your plane journey via the Club’s emissions offset scheme. If flying SAS you can also buy supposedly sustainably-sourced biofuel for your trip.