Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, in a very busy environment of world travel market in London.

But I have the great pleasure of talking today to Lara Paxton from New Scientist Discovery Tours.

You are quite possibly aware of New Scientist. It's a magazine that has been around for 70 years.

And it's one which is delivering, of course, classy scientific content every week.

But it's also taking people on holiday. So tell me, Lara, how does that work?

So basically, the magazine is a kind of science magazine that's aimed to be accessible

tool, and the idea for the travel sector came from the editorial team to bring travel to make

the kind of science travel accessible to all.

So we do a range of kind of tours, cruises, short breaks, all with a science focus, aimed at exploring

curiosity and focusing on different areas of science, whether it's looking for dinosaurs in

Mongolia, to wildlife and ecology in Sri Lanka, to eclipses in Spain next year and Egypt

the following year. What makes these different, though, from other adventure tours?

Because clearly, I can go to the Gobi Desert with lots of people and quite possibly go

and find some dinosaurs.

So all of our tours are accompanied by experts from the world of science that really

bring to life the science content.

They will give a series of

talks and walking seminars throughout the trips. And then in addition to that, they will travel

with the group throughout. So they will be on hand to answer any kind of questions. And their talks

will be aimed at a curious level. So basically people can have a kind of background in science

or have no science kind of background at all.

And the talks are pitched brilliantly so that people, it's open to everybody.

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