Category Archives: Travel

Irish eyes aren’t smiling: Aer Lingus axes Shannon to Heathrow flights

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We’ve just spent five days in Ireland, enjoying the charms of Galway and Kinsale.

We flew into Shannon airport in the West of Ireland, only to discover that the airport was at the heart of Ireland’s biggest news story: Aer Lingus’s decision to end flights from Shannon to London Heathrow. The story was the front page lead story throughout our visit, and judging by last night’s RTÉ report is still dominating Ireland’s news.

It was fascinating as an outsider – but fellow Celt – to see how the Irish media and bloggers were handling the story. The main angle, naturally, was the threat to the West’s economy, and while we were in Ireland the media reported a stream of TDs (Irish members of parliament) and councillors condemning Aer Lingus’s move. (See Irish Independent’s report that Aer Lingus would not change its mind, and Limerick Blogger: Aer Lingus screws the west for a flavour.)

But the other key question was the role of the Irish government, which still holds a 25 percent stake in the former state airline. Ministers appeared slow to respond – many were on holiday – and only after a week did the Government rule out intervening as a shareholder to block the move. Defence Minister Willie O’Dea, who has been a lone voice in the Irish Cabinet actively opposing Aer Lingus’s move, accused the airline of deliberately timing the announcement while the Cabinet were on holiday – see today’s Irish Examiner story.

The Shannon story carries echoes of Britain’s Westland affair of 1985/86 when Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet was at war over the future of the Westland helicopter business. Michael Heseltine was the Willie O’Dea of that saga, opposing his government’s decision to favour an American rather than a European future for Westland. Heseltine famously walked out of the Cabinet as a result.

Much of the coverage of the Aer Lingus affair appears superficial: the classic reporting of angry reactions but little analysis of the issues underlying the story. (One honourable exception was Laura Noonan’s business story on Saturday 11 August.) There was much questioning of Aer Lingus’s right to switch its valuable Heathrow slots for Belfast rather than Shannon flights (see Kevin Myers in the Belfast Telegraph) but no one seems to have thought to ask aviation industry experts for their take on this complex subject. As a result, readers and viewers found it impossible to separate fact from polemic.

The one other aspect of the story that has been only lightly examined is that Aer Lingus is moving the flights to another state, the United Kingdom. This goes to the heart of north-south relations in the island of Ireland. It’s hardly surprising that few in the Republic have raised this issue as to do so would underline the partition of Ireland at a time when north-south (and Ireland-UK) relations are better than at any time since 1922.

It’s easy to think of the Shannon saga as a peculiarly Irish affair. But a very similar row would blow up in Britain if British Airways announced it was ending flights to, say, Aberdeen. It’s about the classic clash between the interests of big business and a region; about what role governments should play in influencing business decisions. Shannon and the mid west of Ireland won’t be the last region to wonder how best to protect themselves when a major business pulls out.

PS: we weren’t impressed by the chaotic scenes at Shannon. Hundreds of people were called to their departure gates, which were all in a tiny corridor without anywhere to wait. The airport kept changing its mind about which flight went from which gate. Finally, the cafe in the departure lounge broke the rules by insisting on taking payment on our debit card in sterling rather than euro, pocketing an extra 3 percent or so of the cost. It would be good if some of the energy spent campaigning against Aer Lingus could go on improving Shannon…

Were you the Como cyclists?

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Cycle_tourists_como_june_2007_2

Just back from a wonderful holiday touring the continent by car.

During our travels, we spent a night in Como Town. We were not impressed by the hotel Metropole Suisse – having been told it had parking, we were not happy to be directed to a public car park half a mile away.

But things improved when we discovered a wonderful pizza restaurant in the backstreets of Como. We spotted these cycle tourists enjoying a meal. After our meal, we moved on to the square on the waterfront to savour Italian ice cream. The cyclists had had the same idea! We wished we’d asked them where they were travelling. If you happened to recognise yourself, please let us know! (The date was Thursday 28 June.)

Holiday time

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We’re off on holiday today, driving down to Lake Garda via Grindelwald in Switzerland, returning via Esslingen in Germany (below).

I may add a few posts over the next fortnight, but otherwise blogging will resume in early July. Enjoy the silence!Dsc02149_2

The tide’s always out at Southend: Bob Skinner in The Observer

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Going to the seaside is a cherished part of childhood. But things don’t always go smoothly. 

My father, Bob Skinner, wrote in yesterday’s Observer magazine about an ill-fated family trip to Southend in the late 1920s. I too remember an early day trip, from Cardiff to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset. (In those days the paddle steamers went from the Pier Head in Cardiff Bay.) Within minutes of getting off the boat I had cut myself on a piece of glass on the beach, requiring an urgent visit to the first aid station. It must run in the family…

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This photo shows Dad, his father and cousin on a more successful seaside trip in the 1930s. We think it was taken at Margate.

Land’s End to John O’Groats: do it now!

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Rob_at_john_ogroats_2Have you ever dreamed of cycling the length of Great Britain? If so, don’t leave it as long as I did to turn the dream into reality.

One summer evening in 1996, I read an article about the ultimate British cycle challenge: Land’s End to John O’Groats. Over a few beers, I vowed that I would do the End to End. The following year, I bought the bike that would carry me the length of the country, a Raleigh Randonneur. I then used it to carry me to the shops or the pub and back, but still proclaimed I would do the big one. Over a few beers, of course.

Five years ago this week, I finally set off from Land’s End. It was the end of Golden Jubilee week and I was taking advantage of the annual End to End holiday run by Bike Adventures to make the trip and raise money for faceupcymru, a Welsh charity that helps people with head, neck or oral cancer. 

It was the most amazing experience of my life. It tested me to the limits, especially in the tough early days in the west country, while teaching me a huge amount about my own country.

I’ll write more about my Land’s End to John O’Groats experience in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here’s one of my favourite scenes from the ride: Loch Linnhe on the west coast of Scotland.

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New England, old courtesy

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Whale_and_birds_010507_copy_8 Just back from a wonderful holiday in Boston and Cape Cod. The highlight was whale-watching off Provincetown. We saw dozens of whales, including a mother and calf.

Boston makes a good living reminding everyone of its role in helping America win independence from Britain. We didn’t take it personally, even when we saw Nike ads on subway trains proclaiming: "The British aren’t coming. Run easy Boston."

We loved the kindness and courtesy of the people of Boston and Cape Cod. Car drivers who stopped on main roads to allow us to cycle onto the route. Folk in Boston who volunteered help when they saw us studying a streetmap. The security manager at Boston’s Sheraton hotel, Pat Curran, who despatched my iPod to me after I had left it in our room when we flew home. The staff of Chatham Wayside Inn in Cape Cod, especially Desi who stored our hire bikes overnight and made us feel so welcome.

We saw the very best of America in New England, and hope to return.   

Cycling around Tetbury and Fosse Way

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I enjoy The Guardian’s Country Diary, which happily sits amongst comment and letters about nuclear power, the state of the economy and ‘stern Kenyan abuses’.

Today’s column brought back happy memories. It describes a winter’s cycle ride to Tetbury in Gloucestershire, near the ancient Fosse Way.

I made a similar bike ride 11 years ago, when I was living in Ashton Keynes in Wiltshire. I had just got a new, lighter bike and was keen to try it out. The weather was February-raw, but it was fascinating to spot the abandoned sections of the Roman road in the weak sunlight.

Two years later, I saw Fosse Way from the air, thanks to a friend who owned a microlight based at Kemble airfield. Not far away, the Ridgeway offers another ancient route through the countryside in rather wilder countryside – at least by the standards of Southern England.

The plane that fell to earth

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Can you imagine an airline that killed one passenger in every 385 that it carried?

That was the shocking record of an airline that once flew between Britain and South America. A British airline, a forerunner of British Airways, called British South American Airways.

BSAA was run by Don Bennett, the leader of the wartime Pathfinder Force, which led bomber raids during the Second World War. Bennett tried to reassure civil aviation bosses that BSAA had a far better safety record than his Pathfinders – as if losing fewer passengers than bomber crews was a suitable benchmark for an airline.   

I’ve just read Jay Rayner’s fascinating book, Star Dust Falling, about the airline and its most famous crash, that of the Lancastrian airliner Star Dust in the Andes in 1947. The wreckage was finally discovered over 50 years later. Rayner tells the moving story of the passengers who lost their lives when the aircraft hit a mountain side. Amazingly, it took further tragedy before Bennett was fired.

Into Africa

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Gambia
This is my last post for a week or so, as we’re off to Gambia in the morning for some winter sunshine.

Here’s a picture I took on our last visit a year ago.

In Flanders Fields

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After 90 years, the shadow of the first world war still rests heavily upon the fields of Flanders in Belgium.

Last Friday night, we happened upon Essex Farm Cemetery, north of Ieper. (Ieper is the modern name for Ypres, the town wiped off the face of the
earth by German artillery fire and better known to Great War tommies as
‘Wipers’.)

We were on our way to Nieuwpoort, our overnight stop before catching the ferry home, when we came across the sad sight of row upon row of war graves. It’s just one of countless war cemeteries in the flatlands bordering the English Channel. Yet I discovered today that Essex Farm is symbolic. For it was here, in a field hospital next to the cemetery, that the Canadian army doctor John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields, one of the most famous Great War poems. McCrae died in 1918 after catching pneumonia and meningitis here – one of millions to die from disease during the year.

Nieuwpoort_1_1 Nieuwpoort, like Ieper, was devastated during the Great War – the priceNieuwpoort_2_2
it paid for being the last town on the Flanders coast held by the Allies. Today, its handsome Marktplein square gives little impression of being a 1920s reconstruction. The Brasserie Nieuwpoort on the square is a fine place to savour a superb steak frites while contemplating the tragedies of the recent past.