Hello, I'm Simon Gorda, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward one or like me, in a rainy Belfast, looking across from the airport to the hills beyond and really wondering when your plane will be along.

But today I wish to bring you good news about somewhere that's not far across the Irish

sea from here. It is Morecambe Bay and in particular the seaside resort that gives that a lovely piece of coastline its name.

Now Morkan Bay, if you do not know it, is this wonderful arc that's contained by the Furness Peninsula dangling down from Cumbria.

You can look to the mountains of the Lake District to the north,

it then swerves around with a fantastic, very spectacular railway crossing

and takes you round to Morkham itself and then down to Hesham

which is a beautiful little village with the only cliffs as far as I know anywhere in

Lancashire but Morecambe itself is like so many seaside resorts in England, it's really fallen on hard times.

More of us have been going abroad and even though you've got very impressive structures like the Midland Hotel,

this wonderful Art Deco property on the seafront, well it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm for the place,

particularly when it's raining. And the good news that I mentioned is from the Eden Project.

They say, and this is, of course, the location down in Cornwall, which has transformed some old china clay pits and is now effectively

saying, here we are, we are the great new indoor attraction in Cornwall.

Although it's been going for quite a few years now, and Eden Project wants to expand.

So here's the tweet.

We're delighted to have reached the point of having planning permission unanimously approved for Eden Project North,

bringing the project one step closer to reality.

And let me tell you a bit more about this project because it's something that I have

been following for the last four or five years. It was originally conceived by a local social

entrepreneur Ian Hughes. He said, he told me there have been enough decline over the years.

We needed something bigger, signature attraction. I looked at things like Tate's and Thieves, the Turner in Margate,

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