Useful links

Plan your own overland journey

• The Man in Seat 61 is the best place to start. This amazingly comprehensive guide to travelling overland within Europe and beyond is compiled by Mark Smith, who is an old hand at navigating the world's train, bus and ferry networks.
• Loco2 is the best site to book train tickets within Europe. It is their mission to make European train travel accessible to everyone, both in terms of ease-of-booking and in terms of price. They understand the thrill of crossing countries overland and making the journey part of the experience.
• Catalina Cargo Conseils is an independent travel agent with incomparable expertise in the field of cargo travel, a unique mode of transport that "allow us to travel by sea to nearly everywhere in the world". It was with her knowledge and efficiency that I crossed the Med by freighter.
• Eurolines is a network of 28 independent coach companies across Europe, making it possible to travel from Sicily to Helsinki or from Casablanca to Moscow. The coaches are comfortable, and with fares between London and other European capitals starting at £5.50, what's not to love?
• ferrylines.com is probably Europe's most comprehensive ferry portal, listing nearly 2000 routes provided by almost 350 different operators. Searching for legs of sea travel here will save the time spent crawling through the websites of hundreds of different operators.
• Hidden Europe is a great magazine that evokes the spirit of Europe's diverse landscapes, conjures up a sense of place and reports on the continent's diverse cultures. Reports are often carried out through the means of slow travel.

Other overland travellers

• Ed Gillespie left Britain in 2007 and spend 381 days circumnavigating the world without taking his feet off the ground. His entertaining travelogues were also published as a series called Slow Traveller for the Observer.
• Graham Hughes is the first person to have travelled to every country in the world without flying. The four-year odyssey took him to more than 200 countries, 60 islands and six continents and proved that - if you want to - you really can go anywhere. His adventures are recorded in a neat Youtube series called The Odyssey Expedition.
• Markus Huhtamäki is currently travelling across the world without flying. He left his hometown in Finland in August 2012 and has been travelling south ever since. I shared my leg across the Mediterranean with him. His travel notes, which reflect on his gradual attempt to overcome depression, sometimes make for moving reading.
• UnPlaned is another diary of an overland adventure from the UK to Egypt, written by documentary film-maker Billy Macrae and rapper and playwrite Dizraeli, who was on a mission to reach Cairo to perform a gig. The journey was taken in March 2010, when travel overland through Syria was still possible.

Aviation and the environment

• The Aviation Environment Federtation is the principal non-profit making environmental association in the UK concerned with aviation, and they promote a sustainable future for aviation taking full account of its environmental impacts, including climate change.
• Plane Stupid is a network of grassroots groups that takes non-violent direct action against aviation growth, campaigning for an end to airport expansion and to aviation advertising and promoting sustainable trasport.
• GreenAir publishes up-to-date reporting on the subject of aviation and the environment. It has links with neither the aviation industry or environmental pressure groups and as such hopes to provide independent analysis.