Simon Walton concludes his strut through Scotland’s West Lothian. Last time, he was on the catwalk, with Karl Lagerfeld, who unveiled his new Chanel collection at the region’s Linlithgow Palace. For this second instalment, our correspondent heads from high couture to high street, and checks in at the check outs in the retail heartland of Scotland’s heartland

Fashionistas have found it, now it’s our turn. Meticulously coutured Simon Walton follows King Karl Lagerfeld down the queen’s catwalk and into West Lothian, the plaid not plain host for Chanel’s Métiers d’Art

The Telegraph CRUISE Show will be taking place at the SECC in Glasgow from 6-7 October 2012 and at Birmingham’s NEC from 20-21 October 2012

The UK’s biggest cruise showcase is perfect both for those new to cruising and needing help to plan their first voyage, as well as seasoned cruisers looking for inspiration for their next holiday at sea

The Telegraph CRUISE Show blows the top cruise myths out of the water for CD-Traveller readers

With just under 200 days to go until the Paralympics event, the countdown for the London Olympic Games is well and truly underway. But what if you missed out on tickets? Happily there are still plenty of ways to enjoy the spirit of the games – from afar or for free. Cheapflights.co.uk has the insider guide

Which are the most popular places to go in the UK for overseas visitors? Counting how many of us visit our own cities isn’t easy but for those coming from abroad, the International Passenger Survey provides some answers and now, Visit Britain has played looked at the data and come up with some answers.

CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month it’s good news for Greenwich and Glasgow but Gulf Air may want to rethink their plans to introduce in-flight phone and internet access

CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, it’s good news for Glasgow and Gothenburg and gourmands in London, but we’ve lost trust in TripAdvisor…

According to Rough Guides, Glasgow should be the Scottish capital. The travel guide publishers have hailed the city as a “warmer less expensive alternative” to its east coast rival

According to STR Global, the compilers of worldwide hotel data, this is the number of hotel rooms that will open in Europe during 2011. That amounts to 747 new hotels but what’s that considering the size of Europe? The interest is in where the expansion is happening.

Escaping to sunnier shores with the kids this half term but wondering which airport to fly out from? Make up your mind with our handy guide

In Glasgow on Thursday night, the annual Celtic Connections began with a torchlight parade beginning in George Square. This is the 18th annual Connections and it has found a niche for itself in the often barren cultural attraction time of January. Running until the end of the month, 1,500 performers in 300 plus events will appear in 13 different venues throughout the city.

The Isle of Arran is known as ‘Scotland in Miniature’ owing to its remarkable mix of mountains, rolling hills, charming villages and beautiful coastline. Resident, Claire Richardson, tells us how to ‘do Arran in a day’

Cast aside any preconception of Scotland’s biggest city as an industrial hell hole and give Glasgow a go. CD Traveller lets you in on five things you really mustn’t miss in Scotland’s capital of cool

Courtesy in tourism is considered a must-have. Any organisation that deals with the public tends to have had training at some stage so that they can achieve high customer satisfaction ratings. Usually it comes down to politeness and a willingness to help – and that seems to satisfy most providers.
But going the extra mile to [...]

This is the last weekend when you can visit the Museum of Transport in Glasgow. It closes at he end of tomorrow after 46 years sitting on the site of the old Coplawhill tramworks which closed in 1962. Now begins the task of transferring the exhibits to the new Riverside Museum which opens next Spring. All through this weekend there are plenty of activities and even trips on some of the classic buses of the Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust.
Tomorrow, the final day, has been given a carnival atmosphere when there will music, dance and comedy alongside the exhibits. The events kick off at 11am on Sunday and runs till 4.30pm.

Having flown quite a bit over the last forty years, I have faced all sorts of reasons for flight delays and cancellations. I’ve had an engine failure in Karachi, a lightning strike over Teheran, thunder and lightning in the airspace in which we are going to fly through and even a delay due to the pilot being removed because he was considered drunk.
But I have never had the reason I had yesterday morning. My flight back from Glasgow had been cancelled because of a volcanic ash cloud in the upper atmosphere.
Anyway you all know about the situation because there was been wall-to-wall media coverage even to the point that this morning, the lead story tended to be the ash story rather than the party leaders’ debate.
Like about 600,000 other people yesterday, I had to decide how to get back home.

It doesn’t seem that it has been 25 years since the Greek actress, Melina Mercouri, and the French culture minister of the time, Jack Lang jointly conceived of the idea of having, each year, a European Capital of Culture. Starting tomorrow, the European Union will be celebrating the idea with a conference in Brussels to consider the achievements and what might be done in the future.
This year there are three capitals of culture per year, Essen in Germany, Istanbul in Turkey and Pecs in Hungary. The idea has been copied in the Middle East, where Alexandria in Egypt is this year’s beneficiary, and the Americas where this year Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic is the winner. As British Tourism Week has ended what next to celebrate tourism? Margaret Hodge our minister for culture, has announced that we will have our own British capital of culture from 2013.

The hotel chain, Jurys, has polled 4,000 Britons to see what they thought were the most unwelcoming cities in the UK. It will probably come as no surprise to you that London was considered to have the worst customer service. People also thought that the locals were ruder than other places. A third regularly didn’t say thank you and over half failed to smile at passers-by. Jurys concluded that this didn’t augur well for us when tourists visit us en masse for the Olympics in 2012.
Is all this a fair accusation at London or indeed, the next most unwelcoming cities of Glasgow, Bradford, Birmingham or Liverpool

The phrase above is the slogan that Visit Britain us using as part of its advertising campaign to encourage Americans to come and see us. The slogan thought up by Californian, Jay Masunaga, in a competition designed to publicise Britain as a holiday destination for the gay community.
To complement the promotion, Visit Britain has also come up with categories of people to whom Britain would appeal. These are Foodies, Night Owls, Event-Goers, Culturati, Chillers and Fashionistas. You can guess what most of these are but how about Chillers

Around here the schools have just broken up and kids are everywhere. But so are cars heavily laden with luggage so it is obvious that some people are leaving tonight for the Christmas break. Maybe they are all trying to travel before even more snow comes over the weekend.

ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) claims that today and next Wednesday will be two busiest days on the roads or at railway stations, airports and ferry terminals as people make the way off for the break. They estimate that 3 million us will be heading away of the Christmas period. This number is about the same as last year so our appetite for a break seems as strong as ever

There are plans for a new runway at Heathrow. Some people think there will be another one at Gatwick when the planning rules expire in about eight years time. In the meantime the crunch is hitting airports now. The extent was brought closer to everyday life with the decision of Prestwick airport to shed about [...]

Following on from yesterday’s blog on the success of Liverpool as one of the 2008Cities of Culture, I thought which city this year.As is now the custom there are two, Vilnius in Lithuania and Linz in Austria. Linz is twinned with Edinburgh but as far as I can see, Vilnius is not twinned with any [...]