March 10th - Travel Clinic
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's podcast is rather unusual: taking as its starting point a selection of questions asked by readers of the Independent about travel. I not only provide the answers – including strong views on some subjects – I also give a score out of 10 as to whether or not I would want to undertake the trip that the questioner has asked about.
Of course this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk/newsletters.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling. |
| 0:09.1 | And a slightly special one today because, well, you may or may not know, but every Thursday generally, depending on events, depending on what else is happening, I try to do a one-hour travel surgery, a clinic if you like, |
| 0:24.9 | talking about, well, anything you wish to discuss from airspace bands to the latest COVID rules. |
| 0:34.8 | And I thought what might be fun is, because I've just finished this thing, |
| 0:40.9 | is to go through a few of the questions, but to apply my own rating out of 10 about whether I |
| 0:51.0 | would actually do that thing that is being talked about. You'll get the hang of it |
| 0:57.0 | very, very well, I hope in just a minute. So, first question, my wife and I are booked to |
| 1:03.4 | travel on a train tour through South Africa and Namibia in late May, early June. Do you foresee any |
| 1:09.3 | problems? My answer is that I don't. I expect it will be fine. |
| 1:13.8 | But, well, I would be, I would give myself a one out of ten for doing the same thing. Not that I don't |
| 1:21.5 | love South Africa and Namibia, not that I don't want to be there in early May, late May or early June, but just because I cannot see any advantage in booking so far ahead. |
| 1:34.6 | You're probably going to get quite a lot of that. |
| 1:37.0 | Good question from Bath Traveller to book or not book flights for the summer. |
| 1:42.4 | Can prices only go up? |
| 1:47.3 | Well, if there is a surge in demand, they will. It's also worth saying that if there is a really strong search in demand, then actually |
| 1:53.6 | supply might come up and prices could come down. It's a very movable feast. But I'd give it a three. |
| 2:03.3 | If I found a fair, I would like, I'd go for it, |
| 2:09.1 | but if they look annoyingly high already, I would simply ignore them and hope that things get better. |
| 2:21.0 | Can you believe that there is a sports team? This is from Jane, and thank you, Jane, heading off to Croatia. Well, what a lovely trip. First week of April. But not everyone is vaccinated and Jane wants to know what sort of |
| 2:29.0 | problems they might encounter. And I've looked at the map. I think there's a minimum of three |
| 2:37.1 | countries they have to go to on the way to Croatia. That's France, Italy and Slovenia, by no means |
| 2:43.0 | the fastest way, of course. And everybody has to comply with all the rules for all the places, |
... |
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