Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Monday the 6th of

October. I have the great pleasure of being in Palma, Mallorca. That's because the Abta Travel Convention,

the biggest event of the year for the travel industry is taking place here, but doesn't really get

going until tomorrow.

Before that, I've been enjoying a tour of Palmer in the company of Palmer resident Dr Nick Brown.

And Nick, what really intrigues me is that you offer free guided tours of Palmer, but they're actually free. It's not one of

these things where I'm expected to give you 20 euros tip at the end of it. You are genuinely doing this

as a public service. What I do give you at the end of it is the PayPal or bank account number of a local

charity, and I invite you to

make a donation of your choice to them. I don't really care how much you give or what you give.

I'm sure most people give something. And if you don't, it's between you and your rabbi, as Richard

Feynman, the great physicist used to say. And yeah, my time is available for people. I'm early retired. I'm very lucky to be

like that and so I'm happy to give my time to people. What do you teach them? What can they find out

on one of your tours? Well, I'm available to take people around the island of Mayorka, but the

majority of my tours are Palmer Old Town where there's all sorts of interesting historical

details that you

wouldn't normally see walking around by yourself unless you know where to look. You also run a

Facebook site which is all about Mayorka Public Transport. It's something which I think confuses a lot of

travellers. Yes you get here the the first thing you learn is that there,

or you don't necessarily learn, is there are two bus companies. So someone says, oh, the buses are great in New York, you just tap on with your credit card. And then you get on a Palmer City bus, and you try to tap on, and you get a very hard stare from the driver. There are two bus companies, the city one and the country one. and their fair systems are not yet aligned.

We're hoping that will happen next year.

Getting on the bus in a foreign country, as I think still where you don't speak the language, I think it's still quite a challenge for many people. It's like, oh, if we get on, they're going the wrong way, are we going to end up as hostages or something? And it'll be embarrassing. I think most people are scared, but worried about the about the slight embarrassment. But these days, with your smartphone, with Google Maps doing the routing, with you being able to look and see which direction you're going in, and with a little bit of preparation in advance, for example, learning how you pay, you can have a fantastic time in Mallorca with no without a hire car as well as all the benefits for the environment

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