I like to think I'm quite environmentally friendly (Über recycling, bus & cycle to work etc) and pragmatic about it all. Of course I make my living helping to find oil, but never mind eh! I was interested to put together all the numbers to see how the trip stacked up:
The 873 miles basically works out as the round trip plus 80odd miles of other driving - the return trip was direct (A404-M40-M42-M6T-M6-M74-A702-Bypass-Millerhill-Musselburgh-Home) while the trip down involved a few gallivants in the Peak District (including Glossop no less). Petrol was bought at £1.04, £1.06 and £1.10.
36MPG isn't bad at all compared to the manufacturers figures of 40.9 (combined), especially considering the foutering around in the Peak District and around Berkshire.
The cost - ignoring insurance, depreciation & road tax - roughly matches the cheapest flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow (£60 pp), although booked at short notice that would have been higher. The car would have been sitting doing nothing if the overheads already paid if we'd taken the train or the plane, hence not calculating them in.
The figure of 81g of CO2 per passenger km compares favourably to figures for flights (see here) of say 100 to 120 g/passenger km.
Wonder how the train would stack up? And how many trees do I need to plant...
L/
