{"id":1171,"date":"2022-05-09T08:15:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T06:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/?p=1171"},"modified":"2022-05-09T09:41:02","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T07:41:02","slug":"to-durham-by-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/2022\/05\/to-durham-by-train\/","title":{"rendered":"To Durham by train"},"content":{"rendered":"

Text by Nina Wormbs<\/p>\n

I received an invitation to go to Durham university to speak at a conference and engage with PhD students. I immediately considered it, but I also let my host know that having me over would probably cost more, as taking the train is more costly these days. And I like to take the train. The offer remained and I said yes.<\/div>\n

Come spring and planning, I postponed this for too long. Perhaps due to the war, perhaps because of workload. It worked fine in the end, but in hindsight I would most likely have chosen a slightly different route back home.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Nina Wormbs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stockholm – Durham is rather long. I discarded ferries early on since I now know \u2013 through an earlier mistake \u2013 know that they are not good from a CO2 perspective. I also decided not to sleep on the train. The reason was mainly Covid and the lack of flexibility if you want to have your own compartment. Thus I was left with travelling during the day and stopping on the way. Since I have family in Lund, that was a natural place for my first night.<\/p>\n

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K\u00f6ln. Photo by Nina Wormbs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That allowed me to make an early start on the travel across Germany for K\u00f6ln. The trip had four legs: I changed trains in Copenhagen, Fredericia and Hamburg. This went smooth and without incidents. I arrived in K\u00f6ln and had time for a long walk in the city and then dinner with a friend who also hosted me for the night. Great stop.<\/p>\n

Next day I took the high-speed train to Brussels and then the Eurostar to London St Pancras. This gave me ample time in the afternoon and night in London and also the possibility for a long walk the next morning. Lovely as they say.<\/p>\n

The train for Durham left from King\u2019s Cross which is next to St Pancras. This train was also without incident and I arrived less than three hours later in a magnificent city. The river Wear makes a loop around a hill on which the old town with its castle and world heritage cathedral is built. It is to a high degree a university town, with most of the campus south of the inner city.<\/p>\n

The conference and PhD spring school lasted four days and I left on the fifth. When I got around to make reservations, options were few due to Easter, and I ended up taking the Eurostar to Paris. That was a late train to start with, which also became delayed. Still, I managed to walk around and smell Paris before I went to sleep in a tiny little room on La Fayette.<\/p>\n

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Easter Saturday started with a high-speed train to K\u00f6ln via Brussels. No worries. In K\u00f6ln I had time to buy lunch and walk a bit around the cathedral which is just outside of the station. However, the train to Hamburg turned out to be delayed and I could have missed my connection. The train waited, however, which was a relief. Normally the trip between Copenhagen and Lund is effortless, but during Easter construction work was undertaken and I had to take the bus between the airport and Hyllie. In the end it did not take longer actually, but was slightly more inconvenient. I was rather tired when I put my head on the pillow, after that 15 hour journey. I stayed on in Lund and eventually managed the last leg to Stockholm.<\/p>\n

With this many trips, an interrail mobile pass is the cheapest option. The app mostly worked well and a mobile pass is really useful as it also has search functions, Q&A, community and is flexible. I made reservations on all trains, also those where I did not need to.<\/p>\n

Stockholm – Durham can perhaps be done in two days. But it would be tough and you are vulnerable to delays. I only had two delays and only one was serious. With more travel days the risk diminishes of unexpected major changes to your itinerary.<\/p>\n

And mobility becomes more travel and less transport.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Text by Nina Wormbs I received an invitation to go to Durham university to speak at a conference and engage with PhD students. I immediately considered it, but I also let my host know that having me over would probably cost more, as taking the train is more costly these days. And I like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[77,24,105,54],"class_list":["post-1171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-division","tag-infrastructure","tag-sustainability","tag-travel","tag-travelling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kth.se\/blogs\/hist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}