by Katherine Watson
PhD candidate, Department of History, Heritage and Classics
On the 18th of June, I departed from Swansea on a green travel adventure around the UK to attend the DePOT summer institute and annual conference on ‘Gender, Family and Deindustrialization’ in Belfast and Glasgow. It would be 3 weeks before I returned to Swansea and in that time I would pass through every capital city in the UK and Ireland, by bus, train, ferry and foot.
The CARN pilot green travel bursary covered the first leg of the journey from Swansea to Belfast. I travelled across 2-days. On the first day, I took the train to Fishguard in Pembrokeshire, and caught the ferry to Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland (Figure 1). I stayed here overnight and resumed travel the following morning with a train to Dublin. Here, I stopped for 4 hours to explore before catching a bus to Belfast. The DePOT summer institute was held in Belfast, and DePOT covered delegates’ ferry fares from Belfast to Glasgow where the main conference was located. Once the conference wrapped up, the second portion of my CARN travel bursary was spent on the train fare from Glasgow via Edinburgh to my family home in Cambridgeshire. This marked the end of my CARN supported travel. I returned to Swansea a week later by train.
Ahead of my trip, I encountered mixed reactions. Though many expressed excitement, one colleague cautioned my choice not to fly directly from Cardiff to Belfast. The average cost of this journey in June was £50. The cost of my selected travel from Swansea to Belfast including accommodation in Rosslare was nearly four times this sum. Time is also precious and I appreciate that taking two days for a journey that could be completed in several hours is not an option for many people.
However, it was the slowness of this journey that made it significant. Choosing not to fly during this trip is part of my ongoing efforts to resist the time-space compression engendered by capitalism. The enormity of climate crisis can make small efforts like this feel pointless, but I’d suggest not evaluating our actions against such a large barometer.
Stepping into a slower pace and centralising carbon footprint in the decision making encouraged meaningful reflections. It created moments that denaturalised the rates of consumption, productivity and efficiency that I often expect from myself and services. I have experienced similar mental shifts from limiting my purchases from fast fashion brands and making greater use of the traders at Swansea Market for my weekly food shop. So, if you find my perspectives resonate but adjusting your travel isn’t accessible, consider where you have or can make substitutes.
By far the greatest motivator for this journey was a craving for adventure. I’m a fan of the BBC television competition programme ‘Race Across the World’ where teams use any means of transport except air travel to reach the end destination as fast as possible. My trip had nothing on the distances embarked by contestants on the show. However, it inspired me to find joy and curiosity in relatively mundane forms of travel and this compelled me to make the most of my journey. From aptly working on my fishing-themed thesis while traversing the Irish sea to exploring Dublin for the first time, the three-week round trip presented novel experiences (Figure 2). Had I flown directly, I wouldn’t have been incentivised to tag on a visit to my family in Cambridgeshire or invite my partner to join me for a portion of the journey. While longer and more convoluted, travelling overland and sea encouraged intentional stops along the way.
Bio: Katherine is a third year PhD candidate researching the history and heritage of the fishing and seafood industries in Wales. Her project is entitled ‘Small-Scale Fisheries, Local Seafood and the Future of Fishing Heritage in South Wales’ and is grounded in contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies.