PARIS — It was back in August 2020, with the COVID crisis turning the tourism industry upside down: there’s a young woman paddling aboard a kayak — across the entire Côte d’Azur in the South of France, and beyond.
Alone, with no experience or assistance, she’d set off from Italy to eventually reach Spain. In addition to the athletic challenge, the traveler also has an ecological mission: with the help of local organizations, she regularly stops to pick up litter on the beach. The woman who intrigues passers-by is Anaëlle Marot, 26.
“The idea was to go on an adventure while staying in France,” she says, more than three years after her trip. “With a minimum of security, I experienced the benefits of traveling far away while staying close to home.”
Setting off on foot or by canoe, alone or with others, sleeping in a cabin or under the stars… In recent years, incentives to travel differently have multiplied. The goal is to continue to enjoy tourism without destroying the planet.
Decarbonizing vacation
“The idea is not to end tourism altogether,” Marot says. “Its invention can still be considered a social revolution. It opens minds and improves physical and mental health. However, we must establish a more sustainable model.”
Unsurprisingly, the first criterion for traveling more responsibly means learning to do without planes.
In 2022, the Shift Project, a think tank dedicated to the energy transition, published its “Low-Carbon Travel” report. “The plane is by far the biggest source of pollution in the long-distance mobility sector,” explains statistician and economist Béatrice Jarrige, who led the study. “It only takes one round trip between Paris and New York for an individual to eat up his entire annual carbon capital.” As a reminder, such a trip emits 1.75 tons of CO2 per passenger, while limiting emissions to 2 tons of CO2 per person per year is required to limit global warming to less than 2°C by the end of the century.
Beyond the means of transport, our entire relationship with travel could evolve.
Jarrige says a large part of air travel could be done without. For French travelers, metropolitan France is the destination for 86% of plane trips. While outside our borders, a majority of French people go to Spain and Italy. Certain trips in France or Europe could therefore be made by train, which emits 50 to 80 times fewer emissions per kilometer traveled than by plane and car.
“But for this to be possible, it is necessary to revive our rail networks,” Jarrige says. Of the nearly 60,000 km (37,282 miles) of railway lines that spread across France in the 1930s, only 28,000 (17,398 miles) are still in service today. The minor rail lines have gradually disappeared from the map and their potential return-to-service still remains largely a regional responsibility. In 2022, the southern region of Occitanie, for example, completed the financing of two railway projects, including a new high-speed line and around 15 minor lines. Last spring, the French government promised to establish 10 new night train lines by 2030, on the old network of the SNCF, the national state-owned railway company. The Shift Project also suggests reducing the use of planes and cars by 30% in order to triple the number of train passengers.
But beyond the means of transport, our entire relationship with travel could evolve. Among the emerging alternatives, microadventures are increasingly popular.
A dive into the microadventure
Popularized by British author and motivational speaker Alastair Humphreys, the microadventure is defined as an adventure that is “short, close to home and fits into the everyday life” of “normal people with real lives.” In France, this way of traveling was popularized by Amélie Deloffre. In 2017, she created the newsletter “2 Jours Pour Vivre” (“2 Days To Live”) in which she urged readers to escape from consumable travel to promote “blissful sobriety.”
“I’ve always traveled this way,” Deloffre says. “It first started from a need to reconnect with nature and the simple things in life. Spending time outside, without a checklist and specific sites to take selfies, helps recreate ecological awareness and spur greater commitment.” Also in 2017, Thibaut Labey and Ferdinand Martinet founded Chilowé, which has become the travel agency of reference for microadventures.
Around the same time, Xavier Bourgois launched his YouTube channel, The Other Life. After many years of roaming the world, reading French writer and traveler Sylvain Tesson’s stories finally convinced him that it was time to question the way we travel.
“Sleeping in a tent and climbing to the top of a mountain is ultimately more exotic than staying in a hotel on the other side of the world.”
“A lot of YouTubers were talking about traveling, but not at the local level,” Bourgeois says, “The fantasies around this topic revolved only around distant exoticism and Instagram clichés.” For his first episode, the traveler decided to spend six days in a cabin in the eastern Vosges department, 600 km (373 miles) from home. But it was his 12th video, devoted to his journey along the Loire River by raft, which made him popular. “The goal was to suggest trips that were easy to complete, so the success of this spectacular challenge is a bit of a shame,” he says with irony.
Since then, Bourgois has multiplied the number of microadventure experiences that he shares with his 66,000 subscribers. From trekking to traveling on horseback, from discovering the Normandy region by canoe to building a cabin in the mountainous Morvan massif, the YouTuber tries to offer a diverse range of adventures. “I try to shatter the image of the over-equipped and very serious hiker that persists in people’s minds. Hiking is also fun!”
All these trips across France have convinced Bourgois that exoticism is sometimes just a few steps away. He himself is surprised to have had the opportunity to admire so many spectacular landscapes without leaving the country: “The Vercors is as majestic as Yosemite Park. It sometimes feels more authentic than a preformatted day in Bali of surfing and eating at healthy restaurants among other tourists. A bike ride in Cantal can be more exotic.”
“We live in a country with incredible landscapes,” Deloffre adds, “The revalorization of France is in progress and must grow.” In her eyes, these debates also make it possible to question the very notion of what defines a change of scenery: “Sleeping in a tent and climbing to the top of a mountain is ultimately more exotic than staying in a hotel on the other side of the world, even if the food and language are different there.”
Memorable memories instead of Instagram pictures
With the rise of social media, the quest for the perfect picture has become the goal of many vacationers. Destinations like the Verdon Gorge or the Calanques of Marseille are now swarmed with tourists every summer, to the detriment of flora and fauna. According to a 2019 OnePoll survey for eDreams, 59% of French people aged 24 to 35 say they choose their vacation destination based on its “instagrammable” potential.
In contrast, microadventurers advocate a quest for authenticity. “We must ensure that we spread across the entire country all year round, rather than concentrate on tourist spots during the two summer months,” Deloffre says.
“Rather than seeking beauty, let’s seek the unknown,” urges Bourgois, who says he pursues serenity rather than the spectacular. During his escapades, the YouTuber likes to find himself far from civilization, in complete autonomy, and to reconnect with nature with simple problems to solve every day. “That doesn’t stop me from meeting people,” he adds. Among his best memories are his first trip to the Vosges, the Cotentin region and the Cézallier plateau in the Auvergne Volcanoes regional park.
For Anaëlle Marot, successful vacations are active ones: “When I was younger, I traveled several times with organizations to improve people’s living conditions. I like these trips, where I could become an actor in the well-being of those around me.”
“Rather than seeking beauty, let’s seek the unknown.”
After kayaking the Côte d’Azur in 2020, Marot, who studied sustainable tourism at the University of Avignon, expanded her project. “This personal adventure quickly took on an international dimension,” Marot says, “It resonated in the hearts of people, scientists, politicians, athletes, but also adventurous women, who are numerous but not very visible in our society.” In the wake of her journey, Marot created the Projet Azur collective to help other women organize trips of this scale: “The goal is to accomplish sporting performances that will attract media attention to then deliver a message.”
Since then, other women have joined Projet Azur. They work closely with researchers who help them popularize science so they can easily communicate it to those around them. In 2021, Philomène Le Lay and Solène Chevreuil cycled across the western region of Brittany to raise public awareness about protecting the water cycle through group workshops. They produced murals on Brittany’s biodiversity and planted trees to create an Orchard of the Future.
More recently, in April 2023, Anaëlle Marot cycled along the Thouet river in western France. With her tent and camping stove in one pannier bag and musical instruments in the other, she went from school to school to raise youth awareness about environmental protection through storytelling, with a tale called “In Search of the Little Drop of Water.” “The children are always happy to see me arrive by bike,” she says with a smile.
For an ideal trip, Marot recommends combining well-being and action, limiting travel times, surrounding yourself well and spending time in nature. “The power of the forest or the sea is fantastic. You need to put yourself in a little bit of danger, but not too much, and above all, let yourself be carried away by the magic of the place,” she says.
Rethinking the concept of free time
Is our way of traveling changing? Not fast enough, lament alternative adventurers. “The situation has certainly evolved since 2016, but air travel still has a positive image,” says Xavier Bourgois. “Influencers have a huge responsibility to show how to travel differently.” While some organizations are gradually bringing train and night train journeys back into fashion, the plane remains French people’s favorite means of transport.
“We are constantly bombarded with pressure to travel,” Marot says. “There is no more free space in our heads to escape and create. The only way out seems to be to respond to the ads in the metro or on our screens that show us only one way to travel: far, quickly and cheaply.” She blames a society that is poorly adapted to the well-being of the population: “People who have had the opportunity to travel differently are much happier and never go back to the old model. I’ve had incredible experiences of escapism and surpassing myself.”
By 2040, the number of people on Earth is expected to reach 10 billion. In order to reduce congestion in the most visited places and preserve the flora and fauna, tourism will have to become more sober, including at the local level. Bourgois, for example, recommends traveling for shorter periods, outside of school holidays. “Trips in small doses allow for more rest and rejuvenation than when you block everything for three whole weeks,” he says.
“In our globalized societies, we pretend to go towards each other, but that tendency has actually been lost in the way we travel.”
More generally, Deloffre says we should rethink the concept of free time. As half of French people don’t go on vacation, our available moments could soon be devoted to activities other than travel and relaxation. “Environmental constraints may soon force us to learn new skills. Tomorrow, our free time may be spent learning about permaculture, helping our neighbors farm or educating ourselves on other topics.”
Faced with all these challenges, Deloffre co-founded the Itinéraire Bis collective in 2023: “The goal is to bring together everyone working to decarbonize the travel sector in order to shake things up on the media side.” The site offers resources and a directory to raise awareness on the subject. Inspiring new, more virtuous trends among influencers is one of the collective’s many future missions. And it promises to be complex, to say the least: “Influencers have a business model to run. When they talk about ecology, they can face criticism. And they are often dependent on their partners. Only big influencers can choose their contracts.”
Nevertheless, Deloffre is determined to work hard to change the way we think about travel. Because in her view, this battle is more necessary than ever: “In our globalized societies, we pretend to go towards each other, but that tendency has actually been lost in the way we travel. Our collective offers solutions to wander freely and have wonderful chance encounters. This restores confidence in others and in life.”
