Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Wednesday,

the 30th of July, and for the last two days of the month, I'm going to take you on travel-related

television adventures, starting today with Destination X. This is, to quote the BBC,

a competitive reality format played out over an incredible journey through Europe, a journey where things are not quite what they seem. One element that is exactly

what it seems is the Games Master, Rob Bryden. To find out more, I've been talking in advance

to the executive producer Dan Adamson. It is an epic adventure, a reality competition and a play-along

game for the audience, full of challenges and full of clues, with one simple question at its heart,

which is where in the world am I? And can you that out? Well of course you can because everyone's going

along in a bus so they just look out the window I can see the bus over there. But of course the

windows are opaque and they only go clear when we choose to show them things and it is amazing

how quickly you lose your sense of place when you take away

people's senses. They all knew where they were when they started. Within half a day's

travel, they thought they were in four different countries. So the game is a bit mind-bending.

Well, it is. I was lucky enough to see a preview ahead of tonight's release and I was

absolutely boggle to find out the destination of the first episode.

But talk us through these incredible twists and turns that you put in without obviously

revealing any spoilers.

We set ourselves the challenge of trying to cover as much of Europe as we can and show

the most iconic landmarks and locations.

That threw up a lot of

opportunity to go to some great locations, whether that's vineyards, castles, you name it. And that gave

us the basis for to set up big challenges and then work out a clue layer, which is, will that,

...