- Simon Calder RSS Feed

Simon Calder: Plane and train during the reign - not much change

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:00:01 +0100

Jumbilation at BA, if you will excuse the term. "Jubilee Jumbo to take flight," the airline announced this week. "One of British Airways' fleet of 747s is now featuring a very special emblem to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee."

Off the rails in Bermuda

Wed, 30 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Agreed, the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Bermuda Railway are unidentical in scale. One traverses 6,000 miles of the least hospitable terrain in the world; the other tootles for 22 miles through a gently beautiful mid-Atlantic archipelago. Yet when it opened in 1931, Bermuda's line fulfilled the same purpose as Russia's: stretching across much of a nation and binding together communities unconnected by car.

Simon Calder: Scotland's new gateway to the Orient - Thurso

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The schedule sorcerers of Peterborough have been busy. "Iran has finally introduced a passenger service on the line from Bam to the city of Zahedan," says the June edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, compiled at the travel firm's HQ in Cambridgeshire.

Simon Calder: Foreign Office seeks to enlighten travelling fans

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Think twice about drinking in Poland: "You can be taken to a drying-out clinic, where you'll be medically assessed and not released until sober. You will be required to pay the cost of any overnight stay."

Simon Calder: Twickers world - how sport events distort travel

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:00:01 +0100

A miserable weekend awaits tens of thousands of travellers. A gloomy prediction, reflecting the inevitability that on Sunday many people will head home after two or three expensive and disappointing days away.

Out on the tiles in Tunis

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tunis, like all the best cities, is a mosaic. The heart is quintessential Arabic, an ancient warren infused with energetic commerce. Beyond it spreads French elegance from the colonial era, interrupted by the archaic achievements of Carthage. Further out still, the dramatic Mediterranean shore is shared by tycoons and tourists – with a sprinkling of artists thrown in for colourful measure.

Beware Greek euros, travel company warns

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Check the serial numbers on your euro notes or you could be left with "funny money", a leading British travel company warned yesterday in response to the deepening crisis involving the single currency.

Inside travel: How to make the most of the falling euro

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

The last time you could hope to change sterling to euros and clear €1.22 for each £1 was in the autumn of 2008, when the pound was halfway down its freefall towards parity – the midwinter trough when £1 equalled €1. Sterling enjoyed a briefest of summer flings in 2010, when €1.20 seemed tantalisingly within reach.

Simon Calder: Tracked down - Britain's greatest A-road. Or is it?

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Two weeks ago, I was rescued by les pompiers, though not in the customary circumstances. I was seeking to descend from Les Arcs in the French Alps. Warning signs strictly prohibited pedestrians from walking down the D119 because of the risk of avalanches. So I hitched, and the local firefighters stopped – immediately improving my hitch-hiking poker hand. All I need to complete an emergency services trilogy is a lift in an ambulance, with or without patient.

Simon Calder: If the risks in Libya don't put you off, the fares might

Fri, 04 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Bums on seats: bluntly, that is the business plan of the airline industry. You publish a flying schedule, then hope that enough people will be prepared to pay enough to meet your costs and perhaps generate a profit. Sadly, this last achievement eluded Bmibaby: the no-frills airline is shutting down this summer.

Bad news for the booze cruise: New green fuel rules are set to send ferry fares soaring

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Fares across the Channel and the North Sea will soar if rules on cleaner fuel are tightened as planned, ferry companies are warning. When internationally agreed measures take effect in 2015, some longer routes could be axed – forcing holidaymakers and hauliers to drive much further.

Holidaymakers get improved protection, but MPs want more

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

MPs have criticised reforms aimed at strengthening consumer protection for holidaymakers which come into force today, warning that they don't go far enough.

Simon Calder: Should you beware Greeks bearing beers?

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Greece and Portugal have much in common. Both are proud maritime nations whose influence extends way beyond their shores and islands. The mainland of each occupies the sunny latitudes from 37 to 42 north, which explains the locals' conviviality and the long-lasting British love affair with them. And both are broke.

Simon Calder: Appealing to the voyeur in us surely beats death itself

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The death toll in the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago this month was the equivalent of four Jumbo jets crashing simultaneously. So the tendency by some parts of the media and the "Titanication" tourist industry to turn what should be solemn commemoration into a macabre celebration is to be deplored. But I welcome the way the centenary has stimulated interest in social history.

Simon Calder: 'Loser cruiser' or the modern way to Paris?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Paris by bus and boat? A hangover from the 1980s, surely. A sophisticated traveller like you may once have taken the tough route to the French capital in the distant past, but since Eurostar began from London and air fares from other UK airports started to tumble, train or plane is surely the only way to go.

Simon Calder: End of the runway for BMI, but will passengers suffer?

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

BMI could be about to vanish. British Midland, as was, has done wonders for UK travellers. But by Friday the Heathrow-based part of its operation is set to become part of IAG and will be subsumed into BA. What will it all mean for passengers – and staff?

Simon Calder: What joyless advice. Port Said is like Liverpool – with sunshine

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You might not want to spend a full fortnight in the city at the head of the Suez Canal, but as a day-trip destination Port Said is one of the most richly rewarding in the Mediterranean.

Simon Calder: The holiday feelgood factor

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:00:01 +0100

Even as the rain doused the quayside at Limassol, and fierce clouds jostled over the Troodos Mountains, at 8am on Wednesday I was in fine spirits after a "Pharaohs and the Promised Land" cruise. Then I met Robert Durrant, a retired cleaning contractor from Norwich in the Lido Restaurant on Deck 5, and we swapped stories about the trip just ended.

Simon Calder: Disney airport? You're taking the Mickey

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:00:01 +0100

Europe's no-frills aviation radar has a new arrival: Paris-Vatry-Disney airport. It even has a racy three-letter code, XCR. While this French airport is not yet on the map for British passengers, it has just launched scheduled links from Marseille, Skavsta in Sweden and Porto in Portugal.

Simon Calder: Fancy a trip to Mexico? The US has the final say

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:00:01 +0100

As the Easter holidays approach, plenty of people besides you (and possibly your family) take an interest in your travel plans – from the milkman to your insurance company, which will want to know if you intend to try anything tricky or stray into trouble zones. But starting this month, another organisation has British travellers in its sights: the US Department of Homeland Security.

Simon Calder: In it for the long haul, for three and a half hours

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:00:01 +0000

You may neither know nor care about the differences between an Airbus A300 and a Boeing 767. But you probably have a sense about the appropriate scale of aircraft: short flight equals small plane; long flight equals big plane.

Nemesis Sub-Terra: Are you feeling scared yet?

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The pun is intentional: Nemesis Sub-Terra is designed to instil terror in the thousands of riders who, from Saturday, are expected to surge through the turnstiles of Alton Towers. But how scary is the new ride? At least two of us are keen to find out: me, and my new friend Dr Paul Tennent, whom I have known for only five minutes but already has my shirt off and is attaching electrodes to my chest.

Simon Calder: Dogged pursuit of a bargain bed in Barking

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:00:01 +0000

The typical travel survey belongs on the far side of the Land of Make-believe. Take this shock finding from the website Jetcost.co.uk: "Over a third of UK fliers admit that they would be willing to pay more for a flight in order to offset the plane's carbon emissions."

Simon Calder: Tourists will choose the path that avoids red tape tangles

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Russia is the world's biggest country, combining natural majesty with cultural miracles. Yet only 85,000 British people go there in a typical year. (For comparison, that is just 60 hours' worth of UK tourism to Spain.) The reason: the complex and expensive procedure for obtaining a Russian visa.

Simon Calder: HKA might win the day, but it will be a long haul

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:00:01 +0000

Considering they had just stepped off a 6,000-mile, 14-hour flight from the South China Sea to Sussex, the first passengers to emerge from the International Arrivals at Gatwick on Thursday morning looked in excellent shape.

Simon Calder: Air travellers may find the only way is Essex

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:00:00 +0000

"We used to have the busiest air route in the world," laments Alastair Welch. He is managing director of Southend airport, which the Transport Secretary will officially open on Monday – or re-open, given the high-frequency car-carrying planes that shuttled to Ostend in Belgium in the 1960s.

Simon Calder: Car-rental rip-offs, and how (not) to avoid them

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Today we celebrate California, home to America's real capital: Hollywood, where the Oscars are dished out tomorrow night. My duty for this Golden State special was to survey the mysterious Salton Sea (see related links).

To be beside the seaside: Simon Calder visits Salton Sea

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

They call it "the fastest water on earth". As I bobbed effortlessly away from the shore, watching the Santa Rosa mountain range melt in the heat haze, such a superlative seemed implausible.

Simon Calder: Making a drachma out of a crisis

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Expect the announcement just after 11pm, Athens time, one Friday evening. By that time, the financial markets in New York will have closed, so the European Central Bank and the government in Athens can get to work to extract Greece from the single European currency.

Simon Calder: Stansted stands still as snow stumps security

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 +0000

You probably don't live at an airport. But after the extraordinary scenes at Stansted last Sunday morning, you may consider moving.

Something to Declare: Holland in bloom; Dengue fever in Malaysia; Vietnam Airlines; airline charges

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:37:22 +0000

Destination of the week: Holland in bloom

Ten ways to weatherproof Britain

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

There is no such thing as "the wrong kind of snow": this is just the wrong kind of country to cope with extreme weather.