Snowcarbon

11/02/2022

If you ever want to book independent train travel to ski resorts - or to anywhere in Europe, this new video that we made (with the help of Cooper, a golden retriever) shows how rail-booking websites inadvertently hide some of the best train journeys - or even make you think the journey isn't possible, when it is!
https://youtu.be/Td2lO0rOraE

26/09/2020

Here's the latest news from Save the Ski Train.

[EN] Dear Supporter, Thank you for your patience while we’ve been busy behind the scenes. We have some updates we’d like to share with you. What’s been happening? At the beginning of August, we approached the Eurostar CEO directly with a letter voicing our concerns about the cancellation of th...

04/09/2020

Are you dreaming of a last minute ski holiday this season? 🤔

Fortunately, it's easy to book train tickets to the Alps last minute too. 🚊

Most resorts can be reach with a Eurostar to Paris, then a TGV down to the mountains.

Changing station in Paris is a doddle, so if you're unsure how, check out our guide on the Snowcarbon website 👉https://www.snowcarbon.co.uk/guides/change-in-Paris/paris-nord-paris-lyon

Change by pre-booked taxi, the taxi rank or RER.

27/07/2020

Via The Man in Seat 61 - seat61.com

Overnight services in Europe had seemingly hit the buffers but pandemic has revived demand

10/07/2020

Today in The Guardian.

The Ski Train should be just 1 of many direct, long-distance train routes across Europe. Our continent, including the UK, needs more viable alternatives to flying, not fewer.

A petition has been started to reinstate the popular train to the French Alps this winter after Eurostar dropped the service for the 2020/21 season

08/07/2020

08/07/2020

Please sign and share the petition to Save The Ski Train: https://www.change.org/savetheskitrain

- reinstate the Eurostar Ski Train

08/07/2020

SAVE THE SKI TRAIN

Eurostar has announced the cancellation of the Ski Train. This is a disastrous move that will lead to far more emissions as skiers and snowboarders are forced to travel by far more polluting modes of transport.

What's more, Eurostar has seemingly not consulted at all with the ski or travel industry before making this decision, when there is much willingness amongst skiers and the ski industry to help support this beloved and popular train service.

Join our campaign with Ski Flight Free, Protect Our Winters UK, Protect Our Winters France and more.



While there are many other great train routes to the Alps via Paris, this is a bombshell for easy, comfortable low carbon travel.

https://www.facebook.com/SaveTheSkiTrain/

Eurostar - we urge you to reconsider and reinstate the Ski Train!

If you're a company or organisati

03/07/2020

Resharing from Ski Flight Free.

In the face of climate change, we sadly don’t have the luxury of time to wait for ‘better’ aircraft.

Developing step-change innovations and bringing new aircraft to market, let alone getting them rolled out widely enough to replace large portions of existing fleets, will take many, many years of accepting the status quo - and will worsen the climate crisis. This is not an option. ❌

That’s why we need to stop relying on silver bullets and sound bites like ‘jet zero’ and start taking meaningful action today:

1. 🤔 Change our travel habits: let’s build a movement of people willing to think about travel differently, where the slower journey becomes part of the holiday.

2. 🚆 Use the infrastructure we already have: let’s maximise the use of fantastic European railways, while also pushing for improvement.

3. 💰 Demand economic changes: let’s demand bold policy decisions that make it far cheaper and easier to take low-carbon transport. Is there anything really more valuable than a healthy society and inhabitable planet?

Johnson’s vision for the UK to build long-haul zero-emission aircraft may never leave the ground

30/06/2020

❓🚊❓ We’ve received a lot of questions asking whether the Eurostar Ski Train will be running in 20/21.

At the moment, Eurostar haven’t confirmed a schedule. Normally it's announced from mid-July. But they have recently cancelled direct services to other destinations in the south of France, such as Lyon and Marseille.

This is a terrible move when more people than ever before are inspired to cut back on flying and take low-carbon routes to Europe. 🤦‍♀️

We’ll keep you posted as soon as we get more information about the Ski Train. Needless to say there are plenty of other great routes to the Alps - you can read all about them on the Snowcarbon website.

23/06/2020

If you're fortunate enough to be thinking about booking a holiday for next season, you might be concerned about how coronavirus will affect your choice and booking. 😬

So what would you like to know?

Right now we're in touch with hotels, apartments, catered chalets and tour operators who work with Snowcarbon, as well as rail operators.

Your questions will help us to:

- Put your concerns to key people at ski and travel companies
- Improve communication by the ski industry
- Help the ski industry to better ‘covid proof’ ski holidays.
- Create and improve guidance on the Snowcarbon website

Let us know in the comments, drop us a message or email. ⬇️

https://www.snowcarbon.co.uk/blog/your-questions-please

03/06/2020

On Friday, Daniel from Snowcarbon will be speaking on the panel “How To ” organised by the wonderful team at Whoski, along with Ski Flight Free, Butta Wax and EcoSki.

We recognise not everyone will be able to, or want to, think ahead to next winter right now.

But we know that as skiers and snowboarders we need to double down on saving our sport from the climate crisis, and have a positive impact on the world.

Register for a ticket on the link below!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/skigreen-202021-registration-107202286926

The ski industry has at last woken up to its environmental impact. So how do you next season?

01/05/2020

“The plane should no longer be a means of transporting [people] in one hour or one hour 15 minutes which could be done at lower cost of CO2 by train in two hours or two hours 30,” Le Marie told BFM TV. “This must be the rule and we will enforce it.”

Do you think environmental conditions should apply to airlines asking the UK Government for financial support?

In exchange for a €7bn coronavirus aid package Air France will have to stop competing with TGV services where rail offers a viable alternative

22/03/2020

If you would like to get your forthcoming cancelled Eurostar journey refunded, the following story might be useful.

However, it starts with boiled cabbage.

In the late 70s, when I was a toddler at school, school dinners were terrible. Any vegetables that made it onto the plate were, to paraphrase Blackadder ‘Boiled, boiled again – and then given a good boil!’ As a five-year-old, I thought that these awful dinners would never change.

I had a babysitter called Rosemary who offered to talk the school’s headmistress to see if the meals could be improved. As a five-year-old, the idea of questioning the headmistress — a kind of mystery authority figure in a young child’s world — terrified me.

But the next day I found myself standing in the headmistress’ office, mouth agape as Rosemary questioned why the dinners had to be the way they were, and then suggested some simple improvements.

Lo and behold, the school dinners got markedly better. It taught me a lesson that I’ve never forgotten, and probably more important than anything else I learned at school: you can challenge the status quo.

Challenging Eurostar to offer full refunds:

As you might know, this week I’ve written some blogs about how to get refunds for cancelled forthcoming train journeys to the Alps. Skiers had written to me that Eurostar had only offered them only a voucher that could be used for a forthcoming trip, rather than offering them a refund.

Indeed, at first the voucher didn’t even cover dates for next ski season. But following feedback from skiers, Eurostar extended the voucher to cover the ski season too (i.e. until April 2021).

Then, as Eurostar confirmed that they were Ski Trains, it struck me that Eurostar should surely be offering a full refund, not just a voucher. And yet Eurostar wasn’t doing this.

So on Friday I Googled ‘in what circumstances are travellers entitled to a full Eurostar refund’ and found Eurostar’s ‘Customer Charter’.

The charter states:

"If, before departure, it is reasonably expected that there will be a delay of more than 60 minutes on the Eurostar service, customers will be entitled to either a full refund or to postpone their journey to a later date. To claim the refund or change the booking customers simply need to contact our call centre with details of the original ticket.”

Surely this would entitle customers to a full refund on journeys that are now impossible to make? I put the question Eurostar’s press office, who told me:

“We can confirm that customers requesting refunds will receive them. In the event of a cancelled train, customers will be able to choose between a full refund or an eVoucher equating to the full value of their Eurostar ticket.”

So now you know. You can ask Eurostar for a (full) refund for your cancelled Eurostar journey, and Eurostar will refund you — in full. Which at this difficult time for everyone, might be very useful in terms of cash back in your bank account.

You still won’t find this information on Eurostar’s coronavirus-travel-updates page.

And I don’t know whether Eurostar is planning to tell customers proactively. But at least you now know.

How this applies to indirect journeys (e.g. via Paris) and journeys booked by third parties, I don’t yet know. It might help with getting the Eurostar portion refunded. On Monday I’ll be asking more questions about this. As you can imagine, it’s a very difficult time for everyone in travel as well as customers, so answers are taking longer to come back. Eurostar, having to cancel trains and deal with so many enquiries, are under huge pressure.

But I will keep asking questions to train companies to get the answers that travellers need. So please do let me know yours, and I will try to help. Keep an eye on the Snowcarbon blog for updates too.

This newsletter is dedicated to Rosemary, who is no longer alive, but is remembered fondly by many people as a wonderful, remarkable person.

Life doesn’t often stand up to scrutiny, but a little scrutiny often improves life. And of course, boiled cabbage.

https://www.snowcarbon.co.uk/blog/eurostar-refund-mentals-and-boiled-cabbage

18/03/2020

Today's update on refunds:

www.snowcarbon.co.uk/blog/eurostar-rail-travel-refunds-take-all-advice-pinch-salt

15/03/2020

This season has been rocked first by French rail strikes, some unusually warm temperatures, and now the coronavirus pandemic too.

Last night, just as we boarded the overnight Eurostar ski train at Bourg Saint Maurice, France’s prime minister issued a statement that effectively forced the country’s ski resorts to close with almost immediate effect. Along with Italy, Switzerland and Austria, this means almost all European ski resorts are closed.

The mood was a bit surreal, with travellers realising that they were taking the last Eurostar Ski Train out of the Alps for the season, leaving a country shutting down to slow a pandemic, only to return to another. A lot of skiers felt that they would have been perfectly happy waiting things out in resort, in the snow and sunshine, rather than return to the UK.

Now, countless skiers and snowboarders are either stranded in the Alps, will have to cancel their upcoming holidays, or are in quarantine back at home. This is devastating for holidaymakers, and the travel industry too.

For many of us, we’re fortunate enough to take open borders for granted. This coronavirus pandemic is showing us an alternative world, one of restrictions, hysteria and chaos. The dream of being able to travel easily across Europe sustainably by train, was already under threat in the current political climate; it now faces another challenge. The mountains need people, and people need the mountains. Hopefully, we won’t be separated for long.

—

How to postpone Eurostar tickets

At the time of this post being published, Eurostar have offered anyone travelling between 13th March and 7th April 2020 a voucher if they want to reschedule their train. The rescheduled train can be up to 12th December 2020.

For skiers and snowboarders, this isn’t good enough - the next winter season will barely have started. We’re getting in contact with Eurostar and will report back when we hear more.

We will post the best information that we can find out from rail companies and rail ticket providers on our blog.