This weekend is the weekend for a number of festivals. Edinburgh finishes, Reading starts today as does Notting Hill. But there is another that transcends all these.

I am talking of the Pennine Lancashire Festival of Food & Culture which takes place in Rossendale this weekend. (www.penninelancashirefestivals.com) In particular I am talking of an event taking place tomorrow on bank holiday Monday. The World Gravy Wrestling Championships.

Estimates vary on the number of people who are flying on a bank holiday break this weekend in addition to all the other flyers but it will be over 2 million. During the summer period maybe 15 million will have gone abroad.

Well it’s the last one before Christmas, the last one before nearly four months without a break. This always seems a long time to me so I always arrange an Autumn break to relieve the continuous onset of winter.

But before winter starts there is this one to enjoy..

Network rail announced an idea for a new high speed train route that would travel from London and linking Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Birmingham could be reached in 46 minutes, Liverpool in 83, Manchester in 66, Glasgow in 136 and Edinburgh in 129.

The media has been reporting signs of an economic recovery and some claim the recession is over. For tourists this is a double edged sword. On the one hand it means that there are better deals to be found during hard economic times. On the other have we the money to take advantage of it. When things improve prices rise as companies try to restore their profit margins.

We are used to the idea of four seasons and in the summer, summer holidays. But why 4? Why not more?
Dr Tim Entwisle who is director of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia suggests more seasons arguing that the idea of 4 seasons doesn’t fit in with how the climate in Australia is. He suggests [...]

Truck drivers were a fairly easily described group. T-shirt wearing with copies of the Sun in the front of their dashboards who are casually dressed in clothes, stubble and manner. Then along came Eddie Stobart drivers and their green trucks. They wore ties, dressed smartly and all the trucks were named after girls’ names. They got a reputation for good courteous driving and an Eddie Stobart driver was seen as a cut above the rest. But the company own more than trucks.
Now they own airports;- Southend and Carlisle.

Should you tip? When do you tip? Is it extortion under another name? Guide books offer tedious pages about it.
I offer no solution to help you at all. Sometimes I have tipped, sometimes I have refused and had the odd surly look. Sometimes I have insulted people by leaving a solitary penny because I was so annoyed and I thought that would annoy them as well.

In the old days, if you had a problem you complained in person or by letter or by telephone. The arrival of the internet allowed blogs and then social websites.

Twitter which sometimes seems no more than the virtual stalking of celebrities has provided a bonus and a problem for the travel industry. It is a bonus in that travel companies can put up last minute offers and thoughts secure in the knowledge that it will be quickly seen by followers.

Another survey, another dodgy conclusion.

This one comes from Teletext Holidays, via the travel trade magazine Travel weekly.

This says that when they asked 2000 children aged between 5 and 15 just under a quarter said that Disneyworld was their preferred destination. The next choice was Spain which was way behind with 8%.