As my wife, Rachel, and I sat at the edge of a pool at our hotel while our two-year-old son, Wilf, splashed happily in the water below, a group of people we had only just met began to bombard us with questions. It seemed we were the first people they had ever come across who had travelled from London to southern Italy on an overnight train.

“Nobody gets sleeper trains, do they?” a bronzed man from Cape Town asked with a smirk, “I thought they stopped doing them in the 1960s.”

Then a woman began questioning us about the more practical side of things. “Planes are a nightmare, with all the security checks, but surely it costs a fortune to come all this way by train, and what about taking children?” she asked, pointing to her young son who was covered in so much blue sunscreen that he resembled a slightly nonplussed Smurf. “It must take for ever,” she concluded, pronouncing the last word as lazily as she could.

The answers to those last three questions are not the ones you might expect. That it is actually possible to get package deals all over Europe with overnight trains seemed to be news to most of our companions. But it is something that is well worth knowing if you’re concerned about your carbon footprint.

According to railbookers.com, the environmentally friendly travel company, the price of staying at the hotel would be the same for any package deal whether you fly or go by rail. So the question of price comes down to a simple comparison of train versus plane.

We booked our holiday a week before we left in August and the cheapest return flight I could find to Naples at that time was with easyJet, which quoted £763.69. For anyone claiming that with a bit more notice you could fly on a budget airline for a fraction of that cost, you can say the same about overnight trains, which have bargain tickets that go on sale two months before departure.

The cost of our return rail fare (including Eurostar from London to Paris, sleeper train from Paris to Rome and 90-minute connection from Rome to Naples) was £895. Even without the environmental argument, the overland journey edged it for us by being first class all the way – not an option on easyJet.

But what about making the trip with a toddler, surely that was a nightmare? Again no. Pulling away from Waterloo marked the beginning of our holiday, which is not a way most people would describe negotiating your way though the obstacle course that passes for a modern airport these days.

Eurostar to Paris is quick and easy. Passengers with young children get priority over any spare four-seat tables, so ask for one the minute you get on the train. We did, and soon had plenty of space in which to spread out.

We got a cab across Paris to Gare de Bercy – anyone with a baby is ushered to the front of the taxi queue at Gare du Nord – and spent a charming hour being plied with free drinks upstairs in the Artesia lounge, which is open to anyone with a berth in a sleeper cabin. Wilf was particularly taken with the cold-water dispenser and was soon wandering about handing cups to everyone.

Once on the Artesia train you’ll find the cabins spotlessly clean and large enough to swing a toddler in, if not a cat. Wilf said afterwards that his favourite bit of the entire holiday was “the sleeping train”, which might frustrate the manager of the four-star Sorrento Hilton, which has a kids’ club and eight pools, but was fine by me.

The other consideration when travelling overland, as our new friend by the pool pointed out, is time. For most people the assumption is that if the journey takes longer it is, by definition, worse than a quicker one. Well, not for me, not for Rachel and certainly not for our two-year-old son. He revelled in the experience, which made it all the more magical and exciting for his parents.

After all, the window of a train is a far more rewarding screen than the one we spend far too much time in front of at home. Watching Wilf’s face as we glided through seemingly endless fields of sunflowers, all drooping their heads towards the sun as it set over the horizon, is a memory I’ll treasure for ever.

Before long his head was drooping, too, so we tucked him in to the bottom bunk while Rachel and I tucked into a few bottles of burgundy (a bit of wine does wonders to help you to get to sleep), some cheese and a loaf of French bread. We woke to coffee and croissants from the steward the following morning and arrived in Rome at 11, feeling fresh and excited at the prospect of the final leg of the journey still to come. It then took less than a minute to get off the train and cross the platform to join our connection to Naples.

Once we had persuaded Wilf to stop playing with the rather snazzy electric blinds on the domestic high-speed line, we spotted slightly disconcerting wild fires stripping through the sun-baked landscape. Arriving at Naples station proved to be an alarming experience, too. It’s clearly a city that wears its corruption on its sleeve and a place where “town planning” is an alien concept; that’s if the vast array of ugly buildings and lurid signs that litter the land between the foot of Vesuvius and the rocky coast are anything to go by.

Thankfully a driver met us at the end of the platform and we were soon winding our away along the coast to our hotel. Before we knew it we were sitting at the edge of a swimming pool being questioned about what it was like getting an overnight train to southern Italy. Well, it was a breeze and, by the sound of things, a great deal less stressful than getting there by plane. I’m not sure when the idea that a journey should always be a chore took such a grip on us all, but I’m guessing it was around the time the budget airlines emerged.

Our holiday soon passed in a haze of peace and tranquillity. The stunning hotel was ideal for a lazy family break, just a short hop down to Sorrento and with astonishing views of Vesuvius. In fact, only Pompeii, and the “Little White Train”, a road vehicle that pulls tourists with young children who are obsessed with trains around Sorrento, succeeded in pulling us away from the pool.

On the Eurostar home I flicked through a newspaper and read that the wild fires around Naples and the locals’ lacklustre adherence to town-planning regulations are actually connected. A helicopter trying to douse the flames the day we had left had apparently been shot at in an attempt by a gang of criminals to keep the fires raging. The Mafia is believed to have started the fires deliberately to make it easier to get permission to build on the flame-cleared land. It is an interesting aside that shows precisely the kind of perspective and insight about your destination that you could miss out on if you travel at 35,000ft.

Dan Kieran is the author of I Fought The Law (Bantam Press, £9.99) and deputy editor of The Idler.

Train versus plane

Three people generate 1.97 tonnes of carbon dioxide on a flight from London to Naples. The same journey for three people by rail generates 0.24 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

A short break to Sorrento with Railbookers.com (0844 4821010, www.railbookers.com) is from £819pp (under4s free). The cost includes return rail travel, transfers in Italy and five nights’ B&B at the Hilton Palace Hotel.

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