Forget ten days on a sun lounger – travel fans are taking what have become known online as ‘extreme day trips’, flying halfway across the world for a single day’s holiday.
Monica Stott, 37, of Wrexham, Wales, loves taking these kinds of one-day trips abroad, which have seen her travel to Milan, Lisbon and even as far as Reykjavik in Iceland.
The full-time travel blogger and mother-of-three told the BBC: ‘There’s research suggesting that most of your best holiday memories are made in the first one or two days. When I thought about it, I agreed. A lot of the best moments happen when you first arrive.’
Arriving just in time for breakfast, the influencer behind The Travel Hack blog and Instagram page packs in activities before flying home that night: ‘It’s an intense, busy, crazy day.’
But despite this, she said on her blog: ‘From the extreme day trips I’ve experienced so far, I’ve genuinely felt like I’ve had a mini holiday.’
Student Luka Chijutomi-Ghosh, 18, of Cardiff, takes day trips that are even more extreme. He once spent Christmas Eve walking around Prague at night for just 12 hours, arriving at 9pm on December 24 and leaving at 9am on the big day. A few weeks later, he visited Paris, Luxembourg, Brussels and Amsterdam in just one day.
He said: ‘I look at how much I spend on a student night out, sometimes up to £60 or £70. If I can get a return flight for under £20 and experience a whole new city instead, why not?’
And the pair are not the only intrepid 24-hour adventurers out there – Facebook groups for extreme daytrippers have pulled in hundreds of thousands of members, who share their experiences of these whistle-stop trips.
Ms Stott first got the idea to take extreme day trips after travelling to Ireland for sometimes mere hour-long meetings with clients for work.
Only there for a single day anyway, she realised if she just stayed a few more hours, she could get a fulfilling one-day holiday out of the experience too.
She then joined one of the Facebook groups where fellow travellers were relating tales of their own one-day adventures – and since then, the blogger has been hooked.
In her eyes, it is a good solution for those who feel like they do not have the time or money for a longer trip.
Mr Chijutomi-Ghosh’s love of a 24-hour trip began with his Christmastime journey to Prague, Czech Republic. When he spotted a flight going for just £15, he booked it immediately – only later realising it would give him only 12 hours there, overnight.
He decided to make the best of it – and the amazing holiday actually made him realise he only really needed even less time, around six hours, to feel he had properly explored a new city.
A few weeks later, the student took his staggering four-country trip to Paris, Luxembourg, Brussels and Amsterdam, after setting himself a challenge to see how many countries he could visit in one day by train.
He said if he were to go on a day trip in the UK, he would likely spend just as much time travelling – so it makes sense to use that time in a better way, by seeing more of the world.
In a bumper blog post introducing readers of her blog The Travel Hack to extreme day trips, Ms Stott explained: ‘In an ideal world, we’d have countless free weekends and endless pots of money to take four- to five-night city breaks across Europe.
‘But this isn’t an ideal world and that’s just not the way it goes! Yes, it would be nice to have more time but if we keep waiting for “more time”, we’ll be waiting forever. Isn’t it better to experience a little bit of a city rather than never experience that city at all?’
It is possible to pack much more into one day than people might think, she continued: ‘You can keep going, keep walking, keep sightseeing and keep trying new food, even when you’re low on energy, because you know you’ll be going home and sleeping in your own bed that night!
‘Where you’d normally feel tired and want to go back to your hotel, something inside you keeps you going!’
But with flying causing 2.4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide – and 8 per cent in Britain – extreme day trips, which rack up a lot of air miles in a single day, have been criticised for their environmental impact.
Ms Stott acknowledged this as a definite downside of extreme daytripping – but argued most fans of these holidays take them because they lack money or time for a longer trip, especially with the high cost of public transport in the UK.
She said: ‘I don’t think it’s fair to say one person’s holiday is more important than another person’s holiday because they’re going for longer.’
Mr Chijutomi-Ghosh said the flights would happen anyway, with or without him: ‘The seat will be filled by someone.’
And he pointed out extreme day trips do not necessarily have to involve flying – his own four-country trip was done solely by train.
Blogger Ms Stott gave some practical tips for those looking to take their own one-day holidays.
She advised that holidaymakers do not try to go anywhere more than a two-hour flight away – otherwise it will likely feel too much travel in a single day.
Dublin, Belfast and Cork are good destinations to start with, she said, as there is no time difference and flights there are short, often cheap and generally run regularly.
Other good options include Alicante, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Oslo, Geneva and Reykjavik.
She also recommended travellers try to ease their pre-holiday nerves to avoid using up their energy unnecessarily: ‘A lot of people get really excited or anxious at the airport and that can be exhausting.
‘If you just treat it like getting on a train or a bus, you don’t use up all your energy with that pre-holiday anxiety.’
