End of an era ... is it time to wave goodbye to cheap flights and embrace slow travel? Photograph: Fancy/Veer/Corbis

Last week, British Airways' Willie Walsh suggested that rising fuel costs could signal the end of the decade-long cheap flights bonanza. Personally, this comes as no great surprise - the emails I receive via my website seat61.com suggest that we're already falling out of love with flying. It's not as cheap as it once was, as budget carriers have added baggage fees and booking fees to shore up their profits. Any glamour associated with flying is long gone, thanks to security hassles, two-hour check-ins and frequent delays. And last but not least, the environmental impact of short haul flights is prompting many of us to think before we fly.

So will we be forced to swap Geneva or Grenoble for Bognor or Blackpool? Far from it. Europe's high-speed train operators now offer "budget" fares of their own, and the less stressful, more environmentally sound overland option is often a more practical alternative than the average short-haul flier imagines. If you book a couple of months in advance, it's not difficult to nab a £59 return ticket on Eurostar from London to Paris, then a ticket from Paris to Geneva by TGV (French high speed train) from £22 each way. No baggage fees or weight limits, city centre to city centre with no extra to pay to reach the airport, and infants under four go free.

True, Geneva or Grenoble are a few hours further away by train than by easyJet or Ryanair, even after remembering that a two-hour flight probably takes four or five hours once check-in and ground transportation are included. But is this necessarily such a bad thing? People who only ever travel by air or motorway typically regard the journey itself as wasted time, unproductive time, a negative experience to be minimised. Which is a shame, as a journey by train (or by sea) can be quality time with your family away from door bells and phone calls, a chance to relax and enjoy scenery over a glass of red, or (if you're working) productive time with laptop plugged in at your seat and no interruptions from the boss. A train journey is a gentle and welcome introduction to the country you're visiting, a chance to "decompress" at leisure instead of being plunged in all too quickly after that tedious teleport from Luton or Stansted. There really is more to travel than just the destination.

So if the cheap flights start to disappear, don't feel that you'll be stuck at home. Unless you want to be, of course!