We all remember the closure for a week of our airspace caused by the ash spewing from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajoekull. I was stuck twice as a result of the fun and games so had to resort to the train to return. Luckily I was only in Glasgow on each occasion unlike people trapped around the world who were well and truly stuck. Under EU law, airlines are responsible for compensation due to delay and cancellation. And as we know, Ryanair strongly objected but eventually gave way, KLM is rumoured still to be refusing to pay and many airlines are unhappy. Lobbying is going on behind the scenes to get the EU law changed.

On the face of it, the use of bodyscanners to deter terrorists or, to put it another way, to make us feel that we are as protected as possible when we fly, is something that few would argue with. But all is not simple and there are many justifiable objections to them, not the least of which is privacy. And health risks. And whether the machines work.

Like the airline industry, it seems that cruise companies have started developing new ways to relieve you of your money. It was always the case that an outside cabin cost more than an inside and the closer you were to the top of the ship the more expensive it became. But most people looked on cruising as an all-inclusive holiday. When you paid you had little more expense to consider other than how to tip and how much. And even that started to be priced in so you paid for it at the point of purchase. That is changing. Now there are add-ons. And most of them are little things but which add up to big money for companies.

As we enter the last bank holiday of summer, (and the last until Christmas) many of us will consider driving somewhere for the day. There will be the usual bank holiday traffic to contend with, roadworks that stunt traffic flows and then all the wonderful sights as you motor down pretty roads. There’s a brown sign to some National Trust property, a yellow AA sign for a fete, a pine furniture sale in a village hall and another pointing out that I can buy blackberries at the next lay-by

Figures recently released show that the slowdown in us visiting both Spain and the United States have ended. During July, the numbers of Britons visiting Spain rose by 4.5% and to the Us by up to 9%. This would seem to show two things; that the weakening euro has encouraged us to go back to visiting countries we found expensive last year and that the rise in Air Passenger Duty last November is not affecting our desire to travel long-haul

A while ago I wrote complaining about the food at Heathrow. (see CD-Traveller December 2nd 2008) You could go to an Irish pub, have Italian food but where was British food? Even in the pub, there were things that only Americans might revere as being British food. As the first sight of something British when visitors come and see us, you would hope that the food at least could be something more than the standard meals that you can find almost wherever you are in the world.
Well, that is about to change for starting August 26th

Last year there was a lot of anecdotal evidence that more of us were visiting castles and heritage. You might remember Sir Thomas Ingleby from Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire saying that his visitor figures were up and Dover Castle has announced a 35% increase in visitors. Now there is more widespread evidence from Visit Britain that it our heritage that draws visitors.

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, there are apparently 880-900 comedy shows. The number of jokes in all material must be difficult to count especially since there are some of the fastest tellers of joke who pack hundreds into each performance.
The winner of this year’s award for the funniest joke has gone to Tim Vine. And it’s a holiday joke so I thought I’d reproduce it here.

You don’t need us to tell you about Cornwall. At some stage in your life you will have heard about the lanes, the beaches, the cliffs, the food and the people.
It’s one of the great British holiday destinations and it crops up quite often in the travel pages of the newspapers and magazines. But not often in the main part of the paper.
Yet that is what happened yesterday in The Times.

Lonely Planet, the BBC owned magazine and tourist guidebook publisher, has surveyed its readers and announced their first ever awards. The idea behind these new awards is to discover what the top experiences of its readers were. But Lonely Planet widened the questions so that its readers were able to offer wider opinions outside the normal sort of awards.