Can you help me to become au fait with Beziers and beyond?

Simon Calder answers your questions on Eurostar, travel insurance, booking flights, and making the most of a trip to southwest France

Gruissan combines beautifully the roles of fishing village and seaside resort (Simon Calder)

Q I am going to Beziers this month for a week. What would you recommend in the city and the wider area?

Peter C

A The southwestern corner of France’s Mediterranean littoral is a fascinating and rewarding area. Beziers, about five miles inland from the sea, is an excellent location for wider exploration.

Start, though, in the city itself. The main attraction is the magnificent cathedral, which unusually includes a tower that you can climb without paying a fee. Adjacent is the new and marvellous Hotel La Prison: the local jail reimagined as a boutique hotel.

Even if you are staying elsewhere, wander in for a drink and the impressive view to the west. Commanding your attention from this panorama: the nine locks of Fonseranes, a short walk from town. The Canal du Midi is hauled high above sea level by these engineering marvels. Adjacent you can see the relics of a failed 20th-century attempt to accelerate the progress of ships to higher altitude using a “water slope”.

Beyond Beziers, the ancient town of Agde (10 minutes by train) offers the amazing Chateau Laurens: an Art Nouveau mansion created at the end of the 19th century by a collector captivated by Egyptomania and Orientalism. The grounds are beautiful, too. Heading southwest, Gruissan, on the coast close to Narbonne, combines beautifully the roles of fishing village and seaside resort – and also boasts the pink salt flat known as Le Salin.

My favourite excursion, though, is inland to Roquefort-sur-Soulzon – where you can sample the exquisite cheese in atmospheric caves. Take the train to Tournemire-Roquefort: an amazing two-hour journey through the hills for an implausibly low fare of €1 on the bus or rather more by rail.

Close by is Millau, location for the spectacular viaduct, and from which you can return to the coast on a bus (this time €2) to Montpellier and onwards by rail to Beziers.

I’m worried my Eurostar trip will be scuppered with post-Brexit confusion still rife (Getty)

Q I have a Eurostar trip booked for July. My passport was issued in October 2014 and expires in April 2025. I know it conforms to the post-Brexit passport rules for the EU. But after your story of easyJet repeatedly misrepresenting the rules and turning passengers away needlessly, I fear some official will misinterpret and deny me passage. Should I get a new passport now, and waste those months?

Viv M

A No. As part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, the UK asked to be treated as “third-country nationals”, which means British passports must meet two tests: On the day of outbound travel, under 10 years since the issue date. On the intended date of return, at least three months must be remaining before the expiry date.

Your passport comfortably meets these tests. It is valid for travel outbound to the European Union and wider Schengen area up to October 2024 for a stay of up to 90 days. Various airlines, journalists and government departments have repeatedly got the EU rules wrong, with some claiming “British passports expire after nine years and nine months”.

I had hoped two years ago that easyJet had finally decided to fall into line. Unfortunately in April ground staff working for the airline at Edinburgh airport turned away a passenger travelling to Italy on a perfectly valid passport, and throughout May easyJet doubled down on its erroneous policy.

After I intervened, easyJet apologised and agreed to pay compensation to the passengers. But the incident has reawakened all the mistakes airlines and holiday firms made after the post-Brexit rules came into effect. Understandably, a number of travellers are worried.

Fortunately, your fate is not in the hands of airport ground staff. All Eurostar passengers leaving the UK are inspected by French frontier officials. They are professionals and know the rules; I have heard no tales of mistakes being made by them. The same applies to travellers leaving the UK via the Port of Dover or motorists from Folkestone on LeShuttle.

Assuming you have no further trips planned to the EU in the months after October 2024, or to destinations such as Turkey or Egypt, I suggest you renew in March 2025 to maximise the value of your passport. It is currently valid for travel to and within the US, Mexico and other nations up to the expiry date.

An injured Australian passenger on Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 talks to reporters at Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand (AP)

Q Following the tragic Singapore Airlines incident, I wonder who is responsible for the cost of medical care in such a case? Do the airlines have insurance or is it the individual passenger’s travel insurance?

Bryan T

A Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 from London Heathrow to Singapore took off on 20 May and flew normally through the night to southeast Asia. About 90 minutes before the Boeing 777 was due to land, as cabin crew were serving passengers with breakfast, the plane flew through “an area of developing convective activity” off the southern tip of Myanmar (Burma).

The investigation shows the passengers and crew endured 19 seconds of extreme turbulence that included a drop of 178 feet in just 4.6 seconds – representing a vertical speed of 26mph. They also suffered violent changes in vertical acceleration. “This sequence of events likely caused the injuries to the crew and passengers,” say the investigators, who have just released their initial report. A 73-year-old British man, Geoff Kitchen, died of a heart attack during the incident. Other passengers and crew were injured, some of them seriously.

When the pilots learnt of the injuries, they decided to divert to Bangkok – where they landed 56 minutes after the plane first hit turbulence. All the evidence I have seen is that Singapore Airlines has handled this tragic incident extremely well. In such circumstances, it is normal that the carrier involved will pick up the bill for medical treatment as well as the other costs involved: from flying out and accommodating relatives of the injured to meeting the costs of passengers reaching their eventual destination. A spokesperson for Singapore Airlines confirmed the carrier will be “covering their medical and hospital expenses” and providing “any additional assistance they may need”.

Injured passengers will also be able to claim some financial compensation under the Montreal Convention, which governs international aviation. Singapore Airlines may proactively offer a settlement to passengers, avoiding the need for protracted legal arguments.

For smaller companies, the recommended business travel policy is ‘do what’s best’ – trusting staff to go for the optimum outcome for the organisation (Getty/iStock)

Q I travel a fair amount for work. My company insists we book through a business travel agent, even though – as I frequently point out to my manager – it can cost more than just booking directly. This is almost always the case on budget airline bookings. Most recently I booked a trip to New York but found out the morning after that I had messed up the dates. I didn’t worry because it was on British Airways and I knew it was possible to cancel within 24 hours without penalty. But the travel agent said the policy only applies with direct bookings, and the rule for agency tickets is that you have until midnight on the day of booking. They even had the temerity to charge more than BA’s fare online. What’s your view on booking business travel?

Name supplied

A There are some superb business travel agents, who are on the ball at every stage: tracking down exceptional value and clocking flight cancellations as soon as they happen to work on solutions before the traveller is even aware of any problem. But others just take the commission and don’t do much for it – in your case, charging more and delivering less.

For smaller companies, my recommended business travel policy is “do what’s best” – trusting staff to go for the optimum outcome for the organisation. In the case of your New York booking, that would be to buy directly from British Airways. It bestows gold-plated protection in the first 24 hours, with an immediate no-quibble refund, and also makes any subsequent problems, such as delayed or cancelled flights, much easier to solve.

There are some credible arguments against my “DIY” recommendation. To discharge their duty of care while staff are away, companies need to know where in the world their people are; a good business travel agent should keep records, and be able to act swiftly if trouble breaks out. And smart agents may have access to better deals than are publicly available. But set against that is the extra hassle that an intermediary can involve.

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