Travel

Q. My wife and I have been invited to a small but formal dinner in the presence of some impressive fellow guests. I don’t want to disappoint her but I have developed a neurosis in situations where, if it would be a breach of etiquette to leave the table to go to the loo, I need to urinate frequently. I recognise the urgency is all in my imagination as nothing much results when I do go, but an accident would certainly be counterproductive to any social ambition. — Name and address withheld. A. See a doctor just in case but there is no need to miss out on a prime social event. Buy a pack of Tena Men Premium Fit Level 4 Pants. These cost roughly a fiver for ten from Boots. They are essentially pull-up disposable pants which, though un-bulky, have top-of-the-range padding.

For some reason, I decided to go to the other side of the world for Christmas. I may never do it again. Not because I didn’t like Australia (I loved it) but because it takes forever to get there. And spending 23 hours with your knees under your chin on a long-haul flight to the Antipodes will cure you of ever going further than Calais. When you’re flying economy it’s of paramount importance to choose the right airline. I tried four for size: Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Jetstar and Air New Zealand. Cathay Pacific flew me to Hong Kong. The staff were friendly and smart but, alas, the Boeing 777 was neither. After that, Cathay’s business-class lounge, where I waited for my connection and drank all the free champagne, was a welcome comfort.

As Sini harnessed up the huskies they were all yelping with excitement, but once we set off and the forest closed in around us they fell silent. Now the only sound was the soft patter of their paws as they raced ahead, dragging our wooden sledge through the snow. It felt good to be back in Lapland, the last wilderness in Europe, where temperatures can drop to –40C, where the population density is barely one person per square kilometre and where the natural world still reigns supreme. I’d been to Lapland once before, husky sledging, but that was across the border in Sweden, 300 miles away.

With the Retail Price Index figures released yesterday, commuters are up in arms at the news that rail prices are set to rise by up to 3.6% as of January. It’s not all fares that will be affected; only those that are regulated by the government – and the price increase won’t happen until the government agrees to it being implemented. But around 45% of fares in England, Scotland and Wales are regulated, including certain off-peak and standard return tickets, and most season tickets in the South East and London regions. A 3.6% increase might not sound huge if you only get the train once or twice a month. But the people that it will really affect is commuters.

Valencia was a furnace. During the short ride from the airport, the taxi driver supplemented his chat about the weather with a photo on his phone sent by his father-in-law. His father-in-law lives about an hour away. The photo showed a bus stop on a deserted street. Attached to the bus shelter was a temperature gauge with large green digital numbers showing 50.5°C. Little wonder, observed the taxi driver, that the street was deserted. He dropped me outside the Sercotel Sorolla Palace hotel where Eva was waiting on the steps. Eva was the Spanish PR lady, or shepherdess, in charge of 13 travel journalists from all over Europe on a three-day cultural tour of the city. ‘Eva I am ever so sorry,’ I said. ‘Shit happens,’ she said pleasantly and idiomatically.

British families are forecast to spend £1,284.54 per person on this year’s summer holiday. That’s up more than £200 on what they forked out last year, says charitable shopping website Give as you Live. And with inflation gathering momentum and the pound still weak, many of us will feel we’re not getting a lot of bang for our buck when we finally get to our destinations. So it would be sensible to consider the simple steps you can take now to protect any money you’ve already spent on your trip – as well as what you’ll spend when you get there – to ensure you don’t end up paying out a penny more than absolutely necessary.

After landing at Gatwick, the plane taxied for five minutes or so and then came to a halt in the middle of an outlying patch of tarmac. I heard the engines wind down. ‘Oh shit!’ I thought to myself. ‘It’s going to be a bus.’ Until then, I had always felt short-changed and mildly resentful when forced to take a bus to the terminal rather than being offered a proper air bridge. Then the pilot made an announcement so psychologically astute that I wanted to offer him a job. ‘I’ve got some bad news and some good news,’ he said. ‘The bad news is that another aircraft is blocking our arrival gate, so it’ll have to be a bus.

It’s one month until Easter and if you’re planning to make the most of the long weekend or the school holidays with a trip abroad be sure to also make the most of your travel money purchase. The fall in the value of sterling since the Brexit vote last June has made foreign holidays more expensive. The price of February half-term ski breaks was up nearly 12 per cent on average, according to M&S Bank. And while £1 would have got you €1.27 a year ago through the currency exchange and money transfer website xe.com, yesterday that had fallen to just €1.14 – a reduction of more than 10 per cent. But if you’re smart when it comes to buying travel money, you could claw back some of your spending power. Here’s how to make your pounds go further.