Not being able to sleep on when travelling overnight

[route101]

I wonder how many people who sit motionless with their eyes closed are actually asleep. I've often had a shut eye and daydream on a train or plane when travelling at night, but it's very seldom that I'm actually 100% asleep.

Sometimes i dose off on the bus home , i frequently wake up so i kinda know where iam , sometimes im too comfortable and dont want to get off.

 

[JLH]

I can and frequently do fall asleep on trains, coaches and when a passenger in a car but sleep on planes alludes me which is very frustrating. I think it is due to the lack of leg space as my knees hurt after a while on planes. I find planes noisy and the food smells keep me awake. As for hints to fall asleep on coaches I would say always have a fleece coat to use as a blanket and sit with the window on the side that you would normally lie on (if you are a side sleeper that is).

 

[kevconnor]

I'm very much in the cannot sleep on public transport group. I often travel on the night ferry over the Irish sea and need a few drams to get any kip.

I am envious of people, like my brother, who could sleep pegged out on the washing line.

 

[Strat-tastic]

I find planes way too warm for sleeping.
Not that I take many long haul flights, mind

 

[GrimShady]

Alcohol, unless I get so paralytic that I pass out (in which case I'd have a very nasty hangover) makes me less able to sleep.

I can't sleep unless it's dark, horizontal and silent. No hope on any form of transport. I just wouldn't consider that kind of coach journey.

Very much like myself with exception that I need some sort of white noise in order to sleep.

 

[HOOVER29]

We live a spit away from the A42 & weirdly I can fall asleep listening to the traffic passing at night (I like the bedroom window open)
When we go down to Cornwall the village is so quiet I don’t sleep very well at all.
Most days I’m flat out on the sofa whenever I get a chance.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I've only done a couple of sleeper trips to the end of the line, and could barely sleep on either. When I've been alighting early (3am at Taunton) I've not even tried to sleep as I'm a heavy sleeper once I get down- so can't trust myself to wake up.

If I'm really tired though, once I "hit the wall" I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, even during daylight. One example being following the aforementioned sleepless night on a French sleeper, almost missing my stop at Wakefield the following afternoon on a crowded LNER service.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I've only done a couple of sleeper trips to the end of the line, and could barely sleep on either. When I've been alighting early (3am at Taunton) I've not even tried to sleep as I'm a heavy sleeper once I get down- so can't trust myself to wake up.

If I'm really tired though, once I "hit the wall" I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, even during daylight. One example being following the aforementioned sleepless night on a French sleeper, almost missing my stop at Wakefield the following afternoon on a crowded LNER service.

Thus giving rise to the saying that the only way to get a good night's sleep on a night train is to have been on one the night before.

 

[HOOVER29]

I remember my first trip on a sleeper. It was from Birmingham new street to Edinburgh back in 1989. I was 21. Thinking I wouldn’t sleep I hit the bar for a few bevvies. The sleeper turned up & I boarded. I was asleep before we left the north tunnel & didn’t wake until a knock on the door brought me tea & biscuits shortly before arrival in Edinburgh.

 

[Groningen]

I am not so sure to go to sleep in a nighttrain, when you are not traveling to the final destination.

 

[gg1]

In my life I've only managed to sleep three times on any form of transport. The first two were on the outward and return journeys of a 20+ hour coach trip to Prague in the 90s. The other time was a few years later on a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, at the time I'd been awake for 18 hours and had been getting by on 4-6 hours sleep a night for the previous 5 days.