August 4th - The Great Race Across Europe
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
And they're off (or at least they will be at 10 am on Saturday) on the great Race Across Europe from London to Istanbul, using only public transport. It's a brilliant endeavour, but I won't be one of the 100 contestants. Here's why...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It is ready Friday the 4th of August and I am talking to you today about a marvellous race which I'm going to be watching the start of. It goes from London to Istanbul. It's called the race across Europe. |
| 0:22.6 | The nearly 100 contestants are allowed only to use public transport and walking if they want to. |
| 0:30.6 | They are starting off by needing to dash to Paris and then from there they will be going to three currently mystery |
| 0:40.0 | checkpoints along their itinerary it sounds tremendous fun and the idea is that well they're |
| 0:47.2 | also in line to win prize worth two thousand pounds that is actually two thousand pounds worth |
| 0:53.7 | of travel from lupine travel the |
| 0:56.3 | company that I've gone to Yemen with and which will also take you to well all kinds of |
| 1:02.4 | exciting places that you're not going to find in the normal holiday brochures |
| 1:08.0 | so a splendid idea great deal of excitement about. I've been speaking to one or two |
| 1:14.8 | competitors and of course the organisers, but I'm not going on the race myself. Now it's not because I don't |
| 1:22.7 | love the idea of going to Istanbul, one of the greatest cities in the world, may be, maybe in a very |
| 1:31.1 | close field the greatest, you can tell me what you think about that. I was lucky enough to be there |
| 1:37.5 | earlier this year and I did the obvious thing which was fly four hours from one of the London |
| 1:43.2 | airports to get there very hassle-free. |
| 1:46.7 | Much more exciting to go across Europe by train, by bus, well, not taxi, possibly ferries. |
| 1:58.3 | And the first reason I'm not going is actually in terms of timing. |
| 2:04.6 | It is not a perfect time to make a journey like this because you are in competition, |
| 2:10.6 | not just with the other competitors, but also with an awful lot of people who want to be |
| 2:16.6 | travelling at the same time on their holidays. |
| 2:19.4 | So I'm looking, for example, at Paris. |
| 2:23.2 | The busiest day of the year for departures from Paris is tomorrow. |
| 2:29.7 | And yet these competitors who are leaving central London to Fowga Square at 10 a.m., hopefully the first of them getting to Paris round about three in the afternoon. |
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