A Guide To Extreme Day Trips: Are They All They’re Cracked Up To Be?

“Extreme day trips” seem to be all the rage in the UK and Europe at the moment, with Facebook groups popping up for people to share their crazy adventures. I’m no stranger to the concept of extreme day trips – back in 2012, I took a day trip to Munich, and the following year another day trip to Milan, and another to Copenhagen in which I also visited Sweden in the same day.

That was when I lived near Gatwick though, and opportunities to do something like that from Edinburgh are few and far between. While London airports offer lots of destinations with 6am flights out and 9pm flights back, regional airports are much more limited.

Back in December, a friend and I decided to try out a day trip to Wroclaw. The flights weren’t ideal – very early in the morning, but then late afternoon back, meaning we wouldn’t have a whole heap of time in the city. Not like the previous ones I’ve done where we’ve had a good eight hours + in the city itself. But we had a fantastic time, and Wroclaw was the perfect size for a short trip!

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There are lots of great things about doing a day trip:

• Checking out a new destination without having to pay out to stay overnight
• Being able to travel with just a handbag or small backpack!
• Being able to travel when you have limited time off
• Travelling to a place you wouldn’t normally have gone to
• A feeling of adventure!

But there are lots of things to consider too. It’s all very well going off on an adventure for a day, but you need to make sure it’s actually realistic and you won’t end up feeling super rushed or stressed. After all, there’s no point if you don’t enjoy it!

In short, here are some things to consider if you’re thinking of doing an extreme day trip:

• Firstly, the cost. There’s no point spending loads on flights just for a one day trip. I personally wouldn’t spend much more than £50 return, but everyone has different ideas of what their budget limit is. However, my main reason for limiting the budget is that if anything goes wrong (e.g. your outbound flight is severely delayed), at least you haven’t spent lots. For Wroclaw, we were prepared to cut our losses if our flight out was delayed.

• The flight times. Frankly, some of the trips I see people doing or considering are insane. You think I’m bad for fast travel! Wroclaw gave us around five hours in the city, and I think this would be my absolute minimum. I don’t want to be on a flight for longer than I’m at my destination!

• The destination. What do you want to see? I don’t see the point in a day trip to a huge city like Barcelona or Berlin, unless you’ve been there before or aren’t bothered about seeing a lot, because you’d hardly see anything. Personally I’d choose a smaller city where I can wander, or one where I don’t have a list of things I want to do. Maybe somewhere a little off-beat – Bergamo in Italy has been a popular one. Lots of people also do EDTs within the UK or Ireland to start with (London, Belfast, Dublin and Cork are all very popular!). I’ve also found that airports at smaller destinations are usually quicker to get through, though Wroclaw was a very noted exception to this as it took over an hour to get through passport control. Which leads me to…

• The travel time & costs at the destination. Another thing that can really eat into your day is getting from the airport. People have been looking at Weeze to visit Dusseldorf, 80km away, and it stresses me out! Someone else decided to fly to Switzerland and was gobsmacked when the train to their destination cost more than the flight. Do your research and include this as part of your plan! As above, some airports are better than others too – we once planned to go into Paris when we had a long connection at CDG, but passport control was well over an hour, which put an end to that.

There seems to be a – I’m hesitant to say hysteria – enthusiasm surrounding extreme day trips, which is leading many people to book unrealistic day trips without considering what it’ll actually be like. I’ve seen people looking to book flights with five hours between them, apparently not realising that doesn’t mean they’ll have five hours in the city. In short, extreme day trips have been popularised outside of the travel bubble, reaching people who don’t know the ins and outs of travel but are excited by the idea of doing something “crazy”.

And while, sure, whatever you book will lead to a story to tell, sometimes those stories aren’t the ones you WANT to tell. Look what happened to me in Dusseldorf!

I don’t mean to sound gatekeep-y because there are people pushing themselves outside their comfort zones and having a great time, and I think that’s brilliant!

In fact, I’m writing this post because I want people to have a good time on their mad little trip!

Some tips for enjoying an extreme day trip

So on that note, here are a few tips on how to take some of the stress out of an EDT.

• Plan! This depends on the destination, but you should at least plan how you’re getting from the airport to where you’re going, to minimise faffing about figuring it out when you get there. It also saves you getting ripped off – is there any point getting a taxi when there’s a bus right outside? Or if you’re going somewhere like Poland and travelling with other people, download Bolt in advance.

• If you’re going to a large city, plan what you want to do. Smaller cities are great for wandering around and just finding things, but Barcelona? Plan where to start, and then think about what you want to see and create a rough route and check distances on Google Maps to make sure it’s a realistic plan.

• One thing I like to plan when I’m short on time is where to eat. We don’t have to be strict about going there, but for example in Wroclaw I found somewhere for breakfast and we aimed to go straight there, which gave us a good starting point. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have anywhere in mind, I end up wandering for hours trying to decide! Maybe that’s just a me problem.

• One thing I WOULDN’T plan is activities that you need to book. Even if your flight is on time, you could be delayed at passport control or in traffic. I’ve seen lots of people say that they’ve missed a tour and lost the money. If you do need to book any entrance tickets, maybe go for the afternoon.

• Consider where you’re sitting on the plane. I very rarely pay for seats, but you might find it’s worth it on the outbound flight if you can book near the front so you can be one of the first off the plane and get through passport control quickly. We could have had a full extra hour if we’d been one of the first through passport control at Wroclaw.

• A little tip, on that note, for Ryanair: don’t check in as soon as it opens. I’ve found if I do, I’m almost always allocated a middle seat in the middle of the plane (yes, including the dreaded row 11!). The first time I decided to put it off for a few hours, I was given seat 1A! If you don’t like what you’re given, you can always pay to change.

• Finally, two packing tips: TAKE A PORTABLE CHARGER. This is my #1 item that I pack on every trip. Most boarding passes are on your phone these days, so the last thing you want after a tiring day is to get back to the airport with 1% battery on your phone as well as your brain. Secondly, it’s a good idea to shove some spare underwear in your bag just in case you do wind up needing to stay overnight. (See: the time my flight home from Riga was delayed by 19 hours.)

With these tips, I have no doubt that you’d have a great time on virtually any EDT.

But, equally, some people try to pack too much in or spend all day travelling.

Each to their own, and some of them do work – as my readers will know, I’m the queen of visiting cities for a day. There are others I wouldn’t recommend, though it depends what you want to do – for example, I’d NEVER recommend Budapest for a day, as it’s one of my favourite cities that I believe requires a minimum of a weekend just to see the highlights, and preferably 3 days.

Someone else went to Reykjavik for the day – I love Iceland, and with so much nature and adventure being the main attraction, I can’t comprehend only seeing the city, the least interesting place in the country!? (No offence, Reykjavik; I’m a big fan, and would almost consider a day trip just to go to the hot dog stand.)

Then there are the really extreme day trips to Lanzarote and Tenerife, requiring nine hours of travel, not including airport time. Does that sound fun to anyone? Apparently it does.

Personally I can’t think of anything worse than spending nine hours on flights and four hours in airports in one day, just for a couple of hours of sunshine in between. And believe me, I get desperate for sunshine sometimes. Yet some people have had a great time doing just that, so fair play to them.

In fact, one of my colleagues, inspired by our trip to Wroclaw, booked a day to Tenerife last month and said she’d do it again! She said she just slept on the flights. A couple of weeks beforehand, I flew to Madeira, and I remember thinking “God, I could not do this all over again in a few hours”. So yes, each to their own!

And at the end of the day, it also depends how much you’re willing to spend. It’s all very well going to Germany for the day, but if it’s going to cost £150 just to get there, why the hell would you? If you find flights for £50 return, excellent. Again, this is up to you, but personally I’ve never spent more than £60 just for a day.

There’s certainly a little thrill to be had from finding great deals, too!

And by the way, I’m not here to argue about the environmental cost. These are flights that are running anyway; it’s only taking advantage of an existing schedule. I do of course recognise the concerns though; in fact, I’ve been writing a post about sustainable travel and whether we should be promoting travel at all, let alone this type of travel.

So it’s a bit of a funny one for me, but as someone who has been tied down to a business in the past with very little time off, I can certainly see the advantages. And I’m someone who can appreciate a mad adventure, too!

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’ve been thinking of doing an EDT anyway. It’s not like you’re considering using a private jet (and if you are, you definitely wouldn’t be reading my little old blog!).

So if you ARE thinking of doing an extreme day trip, hopefully this comes in handy to help you make the decisions that will make your trip a little easier.

Have you been on an “extreme day trip”? Or would you go on one?