The Man in Seat 61
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The Man in Seat 61
This is a personal website which started as a hobby and has now become a full time occupation. I'm not a company or corporation or travel agency, just an individual with knowledge and experience that can help other travellers. The information on this site is given free of charge, to give you a reasonable idea of train times, fares & how to buy tickets - I do my best to keep the site updated, but it's impossible for one person to keep every time & fare up to date all the time. Operators don't tell me when they put their prices up or change their timetables, I have to spot that they've done so, unless a seat61 user helps me by spotting it first!
So treat all information as a guide not gospel, use the links I provide to check information at the official train & ferry websites. Always confirm details direct with the operator or ticket seller. I can't take responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in the information I provide, but please e-mail me if you find any and I will put them right as soon as I can.
My site links to many other websites, all in good faith, but I am not responsible for the content of other people's websites, obviously!
Affiliate schemes provide commission to support the site and my travel habit (er, I mean research, of course), and buy me a beer or two if you choose to click through to buy a ticket, railpass, hotel, holiday, guidebook or insurance and so forth. Affiliate schemes include Thetrainline.com, Raileurope.com, Deutsche Bahn, NS International, ÖBB, Italiarail.com, Omio.com, Booking.com, Hostelworld.com, DFDS Ferries, Stena Line, Brittany Ferries, P&O Ferries, Direct Ferries, Disneyland Europe, Expedia.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk & .com, Tripadvisor.com, Chinahighlights.com, Columbus Direct Insurance, Staysure Insurance, Railbookers, Byway, 12go.asia, Baolau.com, Bookaway.com, ExpressVPN and others. I also feature banner ads and ads posted by Google Adsense & AdFirst Media, although I have only very basic control over exactly what ads they choose to show. Other than this, I have no direct connection with the railway, shipping or booking agencies listed on this site, so if you have any difficulties with them, please don't blame me, but let me know, by e-mailing me. Tell me if an agency gives you particularly good service, too!
All pages on seat61.com are © Mark Smith 2001-2024. All photos are © Mark Smith 2001-2024, except when they have been provided courtesy of another person in which case the copyright remains with that person.
I try to respect people's privacy, just as I hope other people and organisations respect mine when I browse the internet.
If you send me an email I won't disclose your details or email address - let alone sell them - to any marketing companies or spammers. Nor do I send out any adverts or mailing shots myself, so you won't get any spam from me, I don't keep or compile any mailing lists or databases.
If you send me an email about a travel problem with a particular train, ferry, agency or organisation, if I think it is appropriate and you haven't asked me not to, I may share the text of your email with my contacts in the relevant train, ferry or ticketing companies to see if they can help or at least to make them aware of the problem so they can correct it for others. I will only share your name and/or email address with them if I ask you first, or if you have said in your initial email that you're happy for these to be passed on.
If you send me an email about journey experiences, I may post this on this site as a 'traveller's report' to help other people, unless you ask me not to. I normally credit people by name (as it seems unfair not to), unless you tell me you'd rather not be named, or ask me to only use your first name or nickname. If you're not happy with anything I post as a result of your email, just let me know and I'll change it. I will never publish your email address.
You can use this website freely without giving any personal details such as name, address, email address and so on, indeed there's nowhere to input your name or address or anything else anyway. I don't require anyone to register, sign up, log on or any such thing. I don't compile or keep any visitor databases or mailing lists.
If you choose to send me an email I'll obviously receive your email address and any other personal details you choose to include in your email. I explain how I deal with people's emails in the privacy policy above, please make sure you're happy with this before emailing me. I'm a private individual, if you choose to email me I naturally store my emails on my own laptop, PC and backup drives, I take the same reasonable precautions as any private individual both in keeping the computers physically safe and in protecting them with anti-virus & firewall software. My mail server is professionally managed by 6Degrees hosting. If you ever want me to delete all the emails from you for some reason, just ask!
Websites may record the IP addresses of people who visit them and an IP address can in principle be used to identify an individual or at least the computer or network they are using at the time. Websites may also place cookies on your computer which can track online activity. My site does not serve cookies itself, but there are several useful third-party services used on this site which may do so for various legitimate reasons. These include Google Analytics which I use to see website statistics, embedded YouTube videos, adverts served by advertising companies I use (Google Adsense & AdFirst Media). I'll explain more about these below.
(1) Seat 61's own server...
The server on which this website runs is professionally operated by 6 Degrees Hosting and like most servers it logs IP addresses. I have considered disabling the server log completely, but 6 Degrees support staff say this would be risky, as the information is necessary for fault-finding if something goes wrong, or if for example there was a malicious attack. I believe I have a legitimate interest in keeping this information for a limited time for the specific purposes maintaining security of my system. However, I disabled archiving of the server log data so that each day's data is deleted after 24 hours.
In addition to my site's own server, I use several third-party services on my site which - even if they can't record your name, address, email address or any actual personal details like that - may record your computer's IP address and/or place cookies on your computer to track certain activity. I'll now explain a bit about what each of these services do and why.
(2) The seat61 cookie warning.
The cookie message which appears on the screen the first time you visit my site is powered by Google. The script places a cookie on your computer so it remembers you've already been shown the cookie warning and doesn't bother you with it again each time you view another page or revisit the site. Inevitably, Google captures some information at this point, indeed they have to, as they should record your consent to cookies.
(3) Google Analytics.
Like many webmasters, I use Google's free analytics service to understand how many visits each page of my site gets, what percentage of visits are from the UK, USA, Canada and so on, what percentage of visits are made using larger or smaller screen resolutions, mobile devices & tablets versus desktops and so on. Google Analytics uses cookies which it stores on your PC when you visit seat61. The information this generates is anonymous, and used to create reports about how people use seat61, and Google stores this information. I don't and can't access information about you as an individual, only at an anonymous aggregate level, and it's useful - indeed, I'd say essential - for me to understand how seat61 is used so I can allocate my time & effort effectively, for example putting more work into the more popular pages. I believe I have what's called a legitimate interest in knowing how my site is used. You can read Google's overview of privacy & safeguarding data here.
I have implemented the anonymisation of site visitors' IP addresses so Google's servers don't get the last octet of your IP address. That means they cannot identify you as an individual, read Google's explanation of how this works and what this does here. I have also set the individual data retention period to the minimum possible, 14 months. Even so, you can opt-out of being tracked across all websites that use Google Analytics, read how to opt-out here.
(4) Embedded YouTube videos.
I embed videos from my YouTube channel on my site, and have done this using YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. When this mode is used, YouTube does not store any personally-identifiable cookie information on your computer until or unless you choose to play the video. Read YouTube's page about embedding videos & privacy-enhanced mode here.
(5) Affiliate Scheme widgets for Real Russia & ÖBB.
I now avoid hosting third-party booking widgets on my site wherever possible, it makes the site work faster. But for various reasons I do use them for Real Russia (a UK-based company) & ÖBB (Austrian Railways) on several pages, so you can make a booking enquiry on seat61 and the search results open on Real Russia's or ÖBB's website. When you view the relevant seat61 webpage, the widget content is pulled in from Real Russia's or ÖBB's servers. These servers may drop session cookies on your PC when you view the seat61 page. I am told that these session cookies are necessary to connect the right search results with the right user, for example, but as far as I know only session cookies are used, no personal data is collected or tracked by these widgets on seat61, unless or until you transfer to Real Russia's or ÖBB's own website.
(6) Advertising from Google Adsense and/or AdFirst Media.
I show a limited number of ads to support the site from either Google Adsense or UK-based AdFirst Media (who use a Google adserver, I gather). After you consent to cookies in the Google cookie message, they may serve personalised ads using cookies.
There are several other areas which can have data or privacy implications on some sites so I'll mention them here...
(7) Site search.
Some other sites use a site search plug-in loaded from a search provider such as Google, potentially capturing data in the process. My site search uses a simple online form to send search queries to Duckduckgo.com, so data is only sent to Duckduckgo when you type something in the site search form and click 'go'. But in any case, Duckduckgo.com state on their website "We don’t store your personal information. Ever. Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information."
(8) Social Media.
Many other sites use social media plug-ins, where Facebook or Twitter share buttons are loaded from a third party source which can potentially capture information or place cookies on your computer. My social media links are just straightforward image links to Twitter & Facebook so no data is captured by Twitter or Facebook simply by visiting seat61.
(9) Other affiliate schemes.
I have signed up to various affiliate schemes, so that if you click on certain links from seat61.com to a retailer's website, they know you have arrived at their site from mine and can identify whether you buy something from them. That earns me some commission. Affiliate schemes often use cookies temporarily stored on your PC for up to 30 days, so that commission can still be earned if you don't initially buy anything, but return later and do so. The cookies are created, managed and placed on your computer by the retailer's website (or by their affiliate scheme management company if they use one), rather than by this site, but to the best of my knowledge they are simply used to attribute commission to seat61.com by telling a retailer that someone who visited their site did so as a result of a previous visit to seat61.com.
I have chosen not to use any 'tracking pixel' in my affiliate links, so that no data is captured by these companies when you merely visit my site - only if you click on the link and transfer to the retailer's website is a cookie placed and data captured, and by the retailer's website (or their affiliate management company) not by me, although I may have access to reports on the number of referrals, again at an anonymous & aggregate level and not at a level that identifies any individual. I believe I have a legitimate interest in this process as without it the site wouldn't be funded and I wouldn't be able to run it full time to provide the information to end users for free.
(10) Guestbook.
I offer people the chance to leave guestbook messages for me on the Smart Guestbook website. This is a separate website with its own privacy & data policy, it's not part of seat61.com and it's not run by me. I've added text to make this explicit before anyone makes an entry.
This site uses cookies, like most sites do. You consent to the use of these cookies by using my site.
I don't use cookies on my site personally - in fact, I don't even know how to! But some third party content on my site does put cookies on your PC, as explained in the Electronic data processing section above. These cookies are pretty much essential to the way this website is funded and statistics measured, and in all honesty I don't believe any harm comes from them, certainly not the ones we're talking about here. As a one-man show and non-technical person, it seems reasonable to assume that if you visit seat61 with your browser set to accept cookies and none of the anti-cookie measures below are in place, you are happy to accept these fairly benign cookies. So by using this site, you consent to use of cookies.
If you don't really, really don't consent, you can always turn off acceptance of cookies in your browser and delete any existing cookies as explained below or simply don't use my site. Here's some more information about cookies.
Update: The Google cookie consent message I am now using should fix this, and allow you to give your consent to cookies or to decline. On the other hand, I don't know of any way to check or prove that this Google cookie message thing turns off every possible cookie from every possible third party source, so let's just carry on saying that if you get really, really upset about cookies yet for some reason haven't bothered to turn them off in your own browser settings, then by using my site you consent to whatever cookie or cookies still manage to get through and won't throw a wobbly if you find one. I've done my best, dammit!
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small piece of information automatically sent from a website to your browser for storage on your computer. The cookies don't harm you or your computer, and you'll find most websites using them in one way or another, quite harmlessly. If you want to know more about cookies, a good place to start is this page on the BBC website, www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/about-cookies and for more detail see the Wikipedia entry on cookies.
How can you see what cookies are downloaded from a webpage?
If you'd like to know exactly which cookies from which organisations are downloaded when you visit any given webpage (on any site, not just mine) you can download and install the free 'Ghostery' plug-in for Internet Explorer, Firefox and so on at www.ghostery.com. It explains who the various organisations are, and what they use their cookies for.
If you don't consent to your PC handling cookies or have any concerns whatsoever about your privacy and cookies (not that I think you should have), here's what to do:
1) Close this website and use your browser tools to delete any downloaded cookies and reject any further cookies when browsing in future. In Chrome, click the 3 dots top right, select History, click History again then click Clear browsing data. In Internet Explorer, it's usually under Tools then Delete browsing history and Options. In Firefox it's usually under Tools then Clear recent history and Options. You can find advice on how to delete cookies from your computer using various browsers at www.aboutcookies.org. Having talked to my ad-server people, I believe that all the cookies likely to be found on my site can easily be deleted this way, as far as I know nobody I deal with uses disreputable 'flash' cookies that cannot be deleted.
2) Go to www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp: Many reputable advertisers are members of the Network Advertising Initiative. This allows you to opt out of receiving cookie-based 'behavioural advertising' from its member companies, in other words where relevant ads are served to you based on websites you have previously visited.
3) If you go to www.ghostery.com and download the free 'Ghostery' plug-in for your browser you can take control of your own web privacy, checking or blocking scripts or cookies from companies you don't trust on any website, not just seat61.com.