The future is unpredictable at times, that the open university are the experts in distance learning, allowing you to fit study around your life.

What's more, you'll have support from dedicated tutors every step of the way.

Now, suddenly your possibilities are open.

Registered by the 5th of September to get started.

The Open University. The future is open.

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

It is Monday the 7th of October. I'm heading west down the Great West Way.

It's one of those, I dare say, marketing ideas that people come up with in order to

give a story to a series of locations and that is what has

happened I think very successfully with the Great West Way I'm here with two of the people who are

working to promote this it's basically if you think about the Great Western Railway from

London Paddington to Bristol or indeed the M4 motorway that's running roughly parallel, that's what you're looking at, but there's an awful lot more to it.

Let me introduce first of all Fiona Errington, who is the head of marketing for the Great West Way.

Hi Simon.

And we've also got Florence Wallace, who's the head of travel trade for the Great West Way.

Hi there. So I'm interested in what would be a typical trip along the Great West Way. Florence,

you're selling to the travel trade. What are you going to offer people who have perhaps the luxury of a week to cover what's bluntly only about 130 miles. We've got a lot of multi-modal

aspects to the Great Miss Way so you can travel by the rail network you've mentioned but also

the canal network, the Kenanagan-Avan Canal by car or the walking routes and the cycling routes.

So we're sort of promoting the sustainability side of the

route, but also the themes, we've got an extraordinary variety of history and heritage along the

route, so from stately homes and gardens. We've got everything from, you know, great value

...