Simon Calder: The Man Who Pay His Way

First, a declaration of interest – or, if you prefer, an admission of guilt. This year, I expect to take around 60 flights. I cycle, hitch-hike and use trains and buses to cover as much ground as possible; but I also take advantage of the freedom British travellers have to fly near and far. I try to limit the environmental damage by using low-cost airlines flying the most modern aircraft with high "load factors" (ie few empty seats). But my flagrantly high-altitude behaviour is sure to irk environmental campaigners, such as the Green politicians at the European Parliament.

A stated aim of the European Greens is "avoiding, reducing and limiting volumes of road and air transport". They follow a presumption against air travel where other viable means of travel exist. An admirable aspiration, which is one reason I had the nerve to deploy a euro-vote in favour of Jean Lambert, who went on to become London's Green MEP.

With the European Parliament reconven-ing on Monday, it is time to study how our elected representatives travel to the assembly. This is more complicated than you might imagine, due to the ludicrous geopolitical decision to give the parliament two sites: Brussels, capital of the EU, and Strasbourg, home of the Council of Europe

Many British MEPs face awkward journeys from their constituencies to their workplaces. Not so those based in London: it has excellent surface links to Europe, and provides the widest range of environmentally sensitive travel options.

How do they score? When heading for Brussels, they almost all take Eurostar – a trip of just 2 hours 15 minutes from London Waterloo. Not only does this pump out one-tenth of the CO2 emissions of flying (according to Eurostar figures), it is also a much less stressful experience.

Only one MEP insists on flying: Gerard Batten, the UK Independence Party representative. Curiously for a UKIP member, he does not use British Airways or BMI – both UK carriers – from Heathrow, but the Flemish airline VLM from London City airport.

Taking the train to Strasbourg is a trickier proposition, because it demands a change of train – and station – in Paris. Conveniently, the arrival station for Eurostar and the departure gare for the fast track to the Rhine are only 10 minutes' walk apart. Even before the high-speed line to the city from Paris opened this summer, the rail journey all the way from London could be completed in under eight hours. Yet that was evidently too slow for our elected representatives; overwhelmingly, they flew. Badly.

For anyone seeking to minimise the damage caused by flying to Strasbourg there are two obvious options, using high-density, low-emission aircraft: Ryanair from Stansted to Baden-Baden in Germany, from where a direct bus link takes less than an hour; and easyJet from Luton to Basel in Switzerland, with a connection by bus and train taking around 90 minutes. But neither of these options appealed to London MEPs. They prefer to let the commuter jet take the strain. Some chose the only direct flight from London to Strasbourg, aboard a small, high-impact Air France plane from Gatwick.

Claude Moraes, a Labour MEP, is one of them; despite his propensity to climb aboard 50-seater jets, he stresses he and his colleagues are campaigning for a single parliamentary site. Perhaps he finds himself sitting next to John Bowis, a Conservative MEP for London and a regular Air France customer, whose duties include representing Britain on the parliament's committee on climate change.

Instead of flying direct to Strasbourg, other MEPs chose a non-EU airline, Swiss, from London City airport to Basel. One of them was the Green Jean Lambert. She no doubt sometimes finds herself in uneasy geographical, if not ideological, proximity to Mr Batten of UKIP, who flies on the Swiss airline for political reasons: the anti-European says he doesn't fly with Air France because, he claims, "they are unreliable, over-priced and illegally subsidised". So he ends up at Basel airport, too, where cars meet the parliamentarians for the journey on to Strasbourg.

The choices of Jean Lambert intrigued me. "It's about juggling politics, maximising work-time and snatching family time," she explains. "Until recently, train travel from London to Strasbourg took approximately 10 hours door-to-door so it was virtually impossible to travel from London to Strasbourg on a Monday and be there for the start of business at 2.30pm."

So she chose to fly, with a much heavier carbon footprint than the choices from Heathrow, Luton or Stansted. The journey from her east London home to Heathrow "adds over three hours to my journey time", she says. What about Ryanair from Stansted, which is handy from east London, flies to a closer airport and has cleaner planes?

"They have an abysmal record on disability rights and, I am told, are not trade union-friendly." And the efficient easyJet aircraft are declined in favour of inefficient Swiss commuter jets because "I prefer not to use the airlines that have pioneered cheap flights". Also: " The times don't fit: in particular, the return flight time would mean missing votes on Thursday and I don't like missing votes." This last assertion puzzled me, as the last Swiss flight from Basel on a Thursday is at 7.20pm, while easyJet's final departure is two-and-a-half hours later. "With that flight I wouldn't get any of Thursday evening at home."

Additional research by Emma Dunkley

Right of reply

Last week I argued you should always go hiking with someone you can blame when things go wrong, and nominated my walking companion, Mick Webb. Plenty of readers said that my account was one-sided. I quite agree. In a belated attempt at fairness, here is Mick's response:

"Picture the situation: we have agreed, after two 11-hour days of serious walking, to have an easier day, following a more gentle branch of the GR10. The main reason is that I am carrying a footballing injury, which makes steeper descents sheer torture.

"It's a lovely day and we leave the hamlet of Eylie in fine spirits. These continue until the 'well-marked trail' disappears at the entrance to a beech wood that is clinging to an almost vertical slope. After a few minutes of tentative progress, I realise that Simon has set off diagonally down the slope, when the lost path should be above us.

"Soon, a shout informs me that he has found a path, and with much cursing and slipping, I join him to find that the 'path' is an impassable river gully. The following dialogue has been edited for reasons of propriety:

M: What the hell do you call this, then?

S: At least we've managed to descend a few hundred feet...

M: Yes, but the path is above us, and if you think I'm going to try to traverse this slope with a bad leg and no equipment, think again.

S: So, what do you propose?

M: We're going up – in fact, I think I can see a path.

"That was in fact a lie. But I turned out to be right. And as you see, we're still in touch – if only to exchange insults and legal letters."