The technology behind Conscious Journeys

We spend a lot of time asking readers to think about the footprint of how they travel. It seems only fair to think about the footprint of how we publish.

Every page view uses electricity — in data centres, in the networks in between and on the device in your hand. Researchers estimate that information and communication technology accounts for somewhere between 2% and 4% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the same order of magnitude as aviation. A single website is a tiny slice of that, but the principle is the same one we apply to travel: use what you need, and not much more.

This article walks through the technology that runs Conscious Journeys and the tools we rely on behind the scenes.

Our four rules

1. Send less. Fewer bytes over the network means less energy used to move them.
2. Run less. No JavaScript in the browser unless a feature genuinely needs it.
3. Track less. No advertising networks, social widgets or tracking pixels.
4. Build to last. Plain, standard web technology that will still work in ten years.

The stack at a glance

Layer	What we use	Why
Website framework	Astro	Builds plain HTML pages ahead of time and ships zero JavaScript by default
Content	Markdown and MDX files under version control	Easy to write, review and keep forever
Hosting	Static files on a standard web server	No database or application server working on every visit
Design	System fonts and inline SVG	No font files or decorative images to download
Bookings & operations	Viamki	Paperless booking management for tours and local experiences
Measurement	Website Carbon Calculator and Lighthouse	Keep an eye on page weight and performance

Astro: HTML first

Astro is an open-source web framework designed for content-led websites like this one. We write pages as components, but Astro compiles them into finished HTML when the site is built. Your browser downloads a page that is ready to read, rather than a JavaScript application that has to assemble the page on your device.

When a page does need interactivity, Astro’s “islands” approach sends JavaScript only for that one component. So far, Conscious Journeys hasn’t needed any. Even the rail map on our home page is a plain SVG drawing, generated at build time from a list of city coordinates.

Articles like this one are Markdown files. That keeps writing simple, lets us review changes like code, and means our content isn’t locked inside a database or a proprietary platform.

Lightweight by design

A few small decisions add up:

• System fonts. Text is set in fonts that are already installed on your device, so there are no font files to download.
• Illustrations instead of heavy photography. Our maps, covers and icons are tiny SVG files drawn with code.
• No third-party scripts. Fewer requests, faster pages and better privacy. We don’t set tracking cookies.
• Dark mode that follows your device. On OLED screens, darker pixels draw less power.

The result: our home page is under 50 KB in just two requests (about 11 KB once compressed), while the HTTP Archive puts the median web page at well over two megabytes.

Static hosting

Because the finished site is just a folder of HTML, CSS and SVG files, it can be served from almost any web server or content delivery network. There is no database to query and no server-side code to run when you visit, and every file can be cached close to readers.

If you run a website yourself, check your host against the Green Web Foundation directory, which lists providers that can show they run on renewable energy.

Viamki: tour bookings without the paperwork

Sustainable travel isn’t only about how you get there. Once you arrive, some of the most responsible choices are the simplest: walk, join a small-group tour with a local guide, and spend your money with independent businesses. The operators who run those tours are often small teams juggling bookings from many different platforms, plus a lot of spreadsheets and printed lists.

That is why Viamki is part of our stack. Viamki is booking management software built for tour operators, especially walking-tour and free-tour companies. It’s what we use and recommend for the tours and experiences side of our work.

What it does:

• All bookings in one place. Bookings arrive in real time from your own website and from partner platforms such as Civitatis, GuruWalk, Freetour.com, FreeToursByFoot, Buendía and Walkative.
• Digital check-ins. Guides open the attendee list on their phone, check guests in with a single tap and write notes about anything that happened on the tour. No printed lists.
• Reports and fees. Guide fees, revenue per tour and the source of every booking, ready to download to Excel or Google Sheets.
• Everything in the cloud. The whole team works from the same up-to-date information instead of emailing spreadsheets back and forth.

According to Viamki, the operators it works with save more than 10 hours of office work a week on average. That’s time that goes back into guiding, and it helps small local businesses compete with much bigger players, which keeps more of each visitor’s money in the place they’re visiting.

The tools we use to plan journeys

Beyond the website itself, these are the tools we turn to when planning trips by train:

• The Man in Seat 61: the encyclopaedic, independent guide to train travel, with route-by-route advice on tickets, times and which side to sit on.
• Interrail and Eurail: flexible rail passes covering most of Europe. Interrail is for European residents and Eurail is for everyone else.
• Operators’ own websites such as Eurostar, SNCF Connect, Deutsche Bahn, ÖBB and Trenitalia. Booking direct is often cheapest and makes changes easier.
• Back-on-Track: a European network campaigning for more night trains, with a map of current overnight services.

Measuring and improving

We check new pages with the Website Carbon Calculator and Google’s Lighthouse before they go live. If a page gets heavier, we want to know why.

This is a living project. If you have ideas for making the site lighter, faster or more useful, we’d love to hear them.

Good technology should be like a good train: quiet, efficient, and it gets you where you’re going without you having to think about it.