I have been trying to travel by land and sea, rather than air, for twenty years or more, as well as never owning a car and using one only very occasionally. Of course it is hard, when you live on an island and every foreign conference requires some kind of sea crossing. Many ferry routes have closed and it’s now difficult to get even to Scandinavia, for instance. The main problems I find are the time it takes and how expensive it is (journeys that take 48 hours can consume the whole of a research allowance in one trip).

I value travel for the direct personal acquaintance and convivial sharing of research, which can’t be replaced by remote video-links.