Well, hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, the last one of the week, Friday the 29th of April, bringing you the latest news on traveling.

And if you can hear a kind of gentle rumbling in the distance, that is the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm just on the balcony of my hotel in the fine

city of Funchal in Madeira. Over to my left, I can actually see the beautiful other island of

Port d'Aranto, the very rugged coast of Madeira stretching off towards the airport one of the most

exciting airports I think in Europe and everything is now looking a lovely

sparkling sea clear blue skies and I am so thankful that at 5 o'clock this morning I got up but a slightly late train

to Catwick Airport went through there and got to Portugal and I thought the most useful thing I

could do was kind of tell you what the experience was like so that when you I hope get, get to travel, you will be able to,

you'll be empowered, I hope, that's the idea.

So I'll also be telling you just a couple of things about Madeira when I finished that.

So, very smooth at Gatwick this morning, South Terminal Security. It was after my flight

went to, well, I was supposed to go at 10 to 8. So I got there about sort of quarter past 6 and

the first morning peak had kind of gone through all very smooth um extraordinarily well-organized

security i thought where they kind of get you there and ready to go put all your stuff on the

trade but i couldn't believe the number of rejected bags hey everybody i know it's know it's not really fair to blame the poor

traveller, but everything was being rejected. And that was slowing things down. Now, I've got a bit of a

personal interest in this because I used to work for security at Gatwick Airport and therefore I do care

for my dear former colleagues there

and yeah it makes everybody's life easier if you just remember about the good old

liquids rule and of course if you're going to airports particularly Tel Aviv you might have

heard this story today really good idea not to take any unexploded shells through in your cabin baggage or indeed any other kind of baggage.

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