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Britain's top travel guru,
Nigel Coombs, rounds up some belting bargains for the discerning
 traveller.
My name is Nigel Coombs and
you're listening to radiotravel. The big news this month is
that lastminute.com [www.lastminute.com]
has bought a French travel company. The result is that there
are some very good late deals, e.g. Andalucia for £299,
Tunisia for £209 and Gambia for only £329. Great
bargains!
Now if you want to go on your
bike, you can do anything from taking a gentle ride in the
Tuscany hills to go as far as Southern India or even Cuba,
with a company called Saddle Skedaddle [www.skedaddle.co.uk].
Their prices are not cheap. Tuscany, for example, starts at
£925, if you want to go to the Grand Canyon it's £1,250
and those Indian tours start at £1,100.
 Another
company with good deals is web weekends [www.webweekends.co.uk].
They've got offers to New York starting at £375, that's
for a two-night break in some good hotels, and if you want
something different then you can go to a converted abbey in
Paris for £349 which is also a pretty good deal.
I give you all the inside tips!
A new company called urbanweb [www.urbanweb.com]
has launched a programme of foreign holidays for young clubbers
to the really swinging places like New York, Reykjavik, Dublin
and Berlin. And believe me, there are things you can do in
Berlin that your mother never told you about!
And this is cheap as chips! The
air fares to America at this time of year  (we're
in the low season) are pretty cheap. Thomas Cook [www.thomascook.com]
and Teletext [www.teletext.co.uk]
have got the best deals, so have a look there. Go on, be brave!
Another good company that's selling
a lot of good stuff on the internet is En Route [www.enroute.co.uk].
They call themselves "The Travel People", and they
do things like city breaks, taking people to the beer festival,
Formula 1, music and ballet. They're quite cheap, for example,
3 days in Paris start at £99 by coach, but if you want
to go by air add another £100. Come on go for it!
Now here's an unusual one that
we've seen and we like: badger watching. It may not be everyone's
cup of tea, but it's a lovely way to relax. You stay in a
mobile home or at a Bed and Breakfast with prices from about
£45 a night, going up to £75 in  the
summer. The company is College Barn Farm [www.badger-watch.com]
near Banbury, which also has self-catering on a seven acre
conservation project in the Cotswolds.
Now here's something to stay
away from: BOGOF holidays. They're the ones where you buy
one and get one free. They really aren't the bargains they
seem to be. Most of them are outside the school holidays and
the resorts they go to are not very good so don't buy them:
they're not a good deal.
The airline companies have had
a scheme where you can bid for a flight and now a holiday
company is getting in on the same act. The company is called
We can book it [www.wecanbookit.com].
It works like this: you go to their website and you offer
them a price for a holiday which you've seen in a brochure.
My suggestion is that you offer them about 30% below the brochure
price and if you don't get that then go back to them and offer
them 20% below the brochure price. Then you should get a deal.
 More
bargains! If you're fed up driving a modern car then how about
going on a Citroen 2CV holiday. You know those things that
look like prams and go like them as well. There's a British
company called Grand Touring Club [www.grandtouringclub.co.uk]
and they'll take you down to the Bordeaux region for £425
[that includes the train there and 3 nights accommodation]
and then you hire the car and drive around the French countryside
in real style.
My advice: Don't just look.
Book!
And now, finally, let's have
a look at the exchange rates this month, because it can make
a big difference to how much you spend when you are there.
The USA and Canada are both bad, the dollar is only at 1.45,
so that things are going to cost you a lot of money there,
but the good one's are Spain where the peseta is at 264 and
France where the franc is at 10.42. The Irish punt is at 1.25
but the best of all is South Africa where you get 11.5 rand
to the pound which must make it the cheapest destination in
the world today. The trip of a lifetime: not 'arf!
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