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

It's Thursday the 27th of June and if you think, oh, he's on the move again.

That's because I'm on the move again on a train speeding through southern France

on my way to the fine city of Neme.

But that's not important right now, because I want to talk about air routes,

mostly new air routes, because there's some exciting things happening.

Let's start with the news revealed only this morning,

and that is that EasyJet is going to launch his first

ever flights to City of Derry Airport in Northern Ireland. From November

there will be flights from both Edinburgh and Liverpool. Neither of those routes

currently served. At the moment you've only got Ryanair from Manchester and Birmingham

to City of Derry and Logan Air from Glasgow and London Heathrow. So this will expand coverage

to Great Britain by 50%. Except the flights are only going to go on Mondays and Fridays initially.

I'm sure that the airport, which has been through some tough times and is not the most thriving of Northern Ireland's three airports.

I'm sure they will hope that this will increase to daily and EasyJet might even go from its main base London Gatwick.

Let's have a look at City of Derry. It does take you to the northwest of Northern Ireland.

Compared with the other two airports in Northern Ireland, Belfast International, which is by far the

biggest in George Belfast Belfar City, much easier, of course,

to get to Derry, London Derry itself, the fine, walled city with so many stories to tell.

And also, beyond that, to initiate in this wonderful peninsula in the Republic of Ireland,

which is not nearly so visited as it should

be and then more widely the rest of County Donegal surely the finest county on the

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