Jump a budget airline to an outdoors destination. Here's where they all go...
Down in the mouth? Down in the foot? Mountain withdrawal syndrome
symptoms include pathetic outdoor site web browsing, uncharacteristic
shopping at weekends, hopeless gazing at your rucksack and a vague,
if guilty, desire to kill all the livestock in the country now!
Well stop graunching and escape, we've checked out the main budget
airlines and their destinations with some hints on where is good for
what. If you want to sit here muttering darkly that's fine, but hey,
why not plan a long weekend in foreign hills and get out there...
Oh, one last thing, we don't claim to know everything. Any more
ideas, mail them to us and
we'll add them to the list. Oh, if you want something further off,
take a look at cheapflights.co.uk
for some ideas.
www.easyjet.com
Booking on the web will save you £2.50 each way which is
£5.00 for a return.
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• Amsterdam - er, you can go
mud-walking on the polders but that's about it. Other
attractions more undulating than the walking
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• Barcelona - easy access to the
Spanish Pyrenees and a great town to boot
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• Geneva - definitive alpine airport
giving easy access to both the Swiss Alps and, a short train
ride away, the Chamonix valley.
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• Inverness - er, yes. Maybe... But
not just yet
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• Malaga - handy for the Alpajura
and the Sierra Nevada and a good non-summer destination as
the area bakes then.
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• Nice - nicely located both for the
Alpe Maritimes and Haute Provence, 'the Colorado' of Europe
complete with the awesome Verdon Gorge.
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• Palma (Mallorca) - yes, the NW of
the island is mountainous - over 1000 metres - with great
walking and scrambling .
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• Zurich - for a short getaway,
Geneva makes more sense, but good train links to the central
Swiss alps and gnomes
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Hints
Friday and Sunday flights tend to be expensive, so a long weekend
makes more sense. Gatwick to Geneva for example, can cost from
£67.50 to over £200 for the outwards leg and the same for
the return. The more flexible you can be, the better your chances of
bagging a cheapo. You get £2.50 off each way for booking on the
web site. All flights go from Luton and or Liverpool, but you can
also fly to Geneva from Gatwick and Stansted. Check the different
prices for each airport, it's sometimes cheaper to fly from Luton
than Gatwick for example.
The Website
Is esy to use and orange as well. All the best sites are
orange...
www.go-fly.com
Booking on the web will save you £2.00 each way which is
£4.00 for a return.
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• Barcelona - Spanish
Pyrenees
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• Bilbao - ideal for the Picos de
Europa in northern Spain, a few hours drive away
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• Bologna
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• Malaga - handy for the Alpajura
and the Sierra Nevada and a good non-summer destination as
the area bakes then.
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• Munich - ideal for the northern
limestone alps
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• Nice - nicely located both for the
Alpe Maritimes and Haute Provence, 'the Colorado' of Europe
complete with the awesome Verdon Gorge.
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• Palma (Mallorca) - yes, the NW of
the island is mountainous - over 1000 metres - with great
walking and scrambling .
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• Reykjavic - you know you want
to...
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Hints
As ever, try to book ahead and avoid weekends. That said, we found
we could get a return flight to Bilbao for around 100 quid for a
Friday to Monday jaunt just eight days in advance. Again, try a
selection of dates and see which one makes most sense. There's also a
'trade up' option which means you pay more, but have more
flexibility, though for Bilbao it meant paying 40 quid more and still
catching the same plane...
There's also an e-mail service to publicise net offers and you get
a reduction of £2.00 per flight for booking on the net.
The Website
Not as refined visually as Easyjet and some of the deals, special
savers etc are a tad confusing.
www.buzzaway.com
Buzz is having an 'internet sale' on flights in May with a
claimed 'up to 50 per-cent off'
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• Chambery (until 14 April) - Alpine
ski resort
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• Geneva (until 14 April) - ideal
for the alps, train to Chamonix or beyond
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• Marseilles - access to Provence to
the north
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• Vienna - not over-endowed with
mountains but good roads and rail bring the Austrian alps
within striking distance, the city itself is a
mausoleum.
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• Toulouse - handily located north
of the Pyrenees. Fast trains to Tarbes and Pau bring the
range within reach, though a hire car is probably
better
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Hints
The usual.
Website
The site's a bit more confusing than the first two. It starts well
by listing all the destinations up front, but when we tried to book
for Toulouse - a weekend only destination - things got a tad twisted
with no flights available for our dates, same in May, so we were
obviously doing something wrong... but what? A bit of burrowing in
the 'destination' part of the site showed that flights only go on
Sundays, we'd check the timetables here first before booking, but
it's not exactly obvious and we never did manage to find out -
probably because it's a winter only service. Dohhh...
www.ryanair.com
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• Alghero - Sardinia, we don't know
much about Sardinia, but it's in the Med and, apparently,
there's some good walking.
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• Turin - three hours by bus from
Chamonix and even closer to Briancon and the Ecrins Alpes
just across the border in France by hire car.
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• Carcasonne - old fortified town in
the foothills of the eastern French Pyrenees, worth a visit
in itself if you can dodge the millions of
tourists
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• Perpignan - eastern French
Pyrenees again
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Salzburg - spot on for northern limestone
alps in Austria though the service doesn't start till 5
April. Home of the infamous chocolate Mozart
balls...
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Website
Booking is fairly standard with a big page of terms and
conditions, but the background information and links are particularly
good - the timetables are supplemented with a short description so,
for example, if you've ever wondered what Sardinia's like, you'll get
an idea here.
Other Ideas
The only limit is your ingenuity. There are express overnight ski
train running to the alps for example, there's plenty of sunny rock
close to major tourist resorts in Spain, check the guidebooks then
get a charter flight and, one notoriously cheap way of getting to the
Pyrenees, is to scan the ads in the Catholic Herald and jump a
pilgrim charter flight to Lourdes. The food in Lourdes is terrible
and it's stuffed full of tasteless souvenirs, but hey, it's just
hours from the mountains... What are you waiting for?
