Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, the last one of the week.

From me, Simon Calder, it's Friday the 15th of December.

Schools are going to break up very shortly.

You don't actually need a calendar to know when that happens.

You could simply look at flight and holiday prices. Yes, as any parent will know, the only thing

that's more annoying than children is the way that prices of travel products, in particular

flights and holidays, increase outside term time.

It's a phenomenon which has been pretty much going on forever.

And of course it's a reflection of the fact that demand is heavier when more people want to travel.

And that means it's going to be during the school holidays when more people are legally

allowed to travel. And talking of the law, well, yes, last year, nearly 360,000 fines were

issued to people. Parents of children at schools in England, £60 £0 penalties for taking

kids out of school for a holiday. Now, that has been, as it were, an offence for the past

decade. Before that, you could take up to two weeks for family holidays in special circumstances, but Michael Gove, if you remember him,

cracked down on parents doing that and imposed the fine.

Obviously, a lot of them have been going on.

And one can only conclude that people are seeing paying those fines as worthwhile because of

the enormous savings that can be made yes now as a parent i absolutely agree that it's annoying

but i also agree that school is a really good idea and uh you should not take kids out of school and I'll come on to a couple of possibilities a little bit later.

But first I've been looking at the extreme differences in prices.

The ultimate is really on the benchmark ski route in February half term.

That's London Gatwick to Geneva, gateway to the French Alps, of course.

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