Let’s play a game. When I say a word, you say whatever comes into your head.

Ready? Planes.

What did you come up with? Did you say “holidays”? Or was it “queues”? Was it “business lounge” or were you, like the rest of us, thinking “airport nightmares, low-cost, cattle-class scrum and those horrible sandwiches with fingerprints on the cheese”?

Okay, round two. Trains. What are you thinking? Okay, but not commuter trains. Continental ones. And Eurostar. Now what are you thinking? “Comfortable”, “easy” and “environmentally friendly”. You might even have said “romantic”, you old devil you. Was — whisper it — “relaxing” even one of your thoughts?

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We all know that trains are better for the planet than planes — if you fly from London to Paris you are responsible for generating 10 times more harmful emissions than if you had gone by rail, according to research commissioned by Eurostar.

But flying to the Continent is so much quicker, right? Well, not necessarily.

Clearly, in a straight race from A to B, it’s faster to fly. But when you factor in getting to the airport, parking the car, checking in, waiting for your flight, flying, waiting for your luggage at the other end — not to mention filling in all those forms once your luggage has been lost — then all of a sudden, flying isn’t looking that speedy.

Trains, on the other hand, start and end in cities. Ones you might actually live in or near, and want to stay in or near, too. Choose to fly anywhere in Europe, however close, and you’re facing a journey time of at least seven hours, door to door. That’s time enough to go by train from London to Bordeaux or Newcastle to Paris, and not be homicidal at the end of it.

If it’s done right, train travel should be a vital component of the holiday, not just a way of getting you to the holiday. It’s an adventure, with big windows that frame the countryside as it slips past, giving you views of new towns and countries while you tuck into the bottle of wine you’ve brought from home. (Just try doing that on EasyJet.) And if you want a book or a jumper or a third bottle of wine from your luggage, you just go and get it. Easy. Hic.

True, booking flights can be relatively easy online — though not without its frustrations, if you don’t want insurance for a snowboard and a family of cats automatically thrown in. International train travel, by contrast, is fiddly, sometimes involving several connections.

The rail companies, however, are catching up with their aviation counterparts: Eurostar’s website (eurostar.co.uk) is as slick and speedy as its trains, while the German national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, has a superb site (bahn.hafas.de) that details thousands of journeys across Europe.

Rail travel is becoming increasingly competitive on price, too. The high-speed, low-cost iDTGV service, which runs between Paris and the south of France — including Nice, Toulouse, Aix-en-Provence, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Montpellier — practically gives tickets away, with one-way fares starting at just £17. You can book up to six months in advance.

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