There is an interesting article on the Times website showing how the cost of holidays abroad from the UK could go up because British Airways is increasing its fuel surcharge.

Mail will be delayed in the Luton area due to a 24-hour strike which started this morning. Around 150,000 letters a day are handled by the Luton office.

If you are planning a trip to Ireland and like me find it hard to survive with no internet access you might want to visit Carlow. A project run by the council in partnership with E-net has introduced 24 hour wireless access to all of its main streets making it one of the first towns in the EU to offer open air web access.

If you are taking your car abroad you should check your motor insurance to make sure you are covered, that’s according to this article. Most drivers do not realise that their comprehensive policy does not apply when driving outside the UK. Apparently only one in ten policies include European breakdown cover and policies that do include it will often only give third party cover when driving outside the UK. So if you are planning on taking your car abroad it’s sensible to call your insurer to make sure you are covered before you go.

Mail to parts of Derbyshire will be delayed following a localised postal strike. The strike will last for four days from Wednesday 30th of May to Saturday 2nd June when normal service will be resumed. The strike is as part of a protest at the closure of Heanor sorting office.

Have you been somewhere interesting recently. Do you have a travel story you want to share? Or perhaps some advice that will help other travellers. Then we want to hear from you. You can submit your travel stories by emailing us 

Fees can really mount up when using your debit card abroad. It doesn't help when you think your card is free to use and then find out that you have been charged a fee after all. HSBC advertise the fact that their debit cards are free from transaction fees when used abroad. They do however, charge 2.75% on top of the exchange rate for overseas withdrawals which they say is not a fee, its simply how they calculate their exchange rate. It sounds like a fee to me.

If you've traveled a lot and have spent time in extortionately charged Internet cafe's trying to read your email and sending letters from the Internet  you've probably decided to start taking your laptop with you and making use of WiFi hotspots instead.

WiFi hotspots enable you to connect to the Internet from your own laptop or WiFi enabled device usually for a small fee and in some cases for free. I signed up with BT OpenZone which enables me to access the Internet from various WiFi hotspots world wide for a monthly fee which works out considerably cheaper than using an Internet cafe.

Accessing a WiFi hotspot is usually a simple affair and involves you turning on your computer and accessing any web page which will redirect you to the WiFi providers website. If they are one of the larger providers such as T-Mobile or BT OpenZone they'll provide you with a login screen to login to their service, or if you are from another service provider you are sometimes given the option to log into that service via them. If you don't have an account you can usually sign up for an account online or just buy time online, usually in 1 hour increments. After you are logged in, most WiFi providers will display a status page showing you how much time you have left online. 

If you would like to find WiFi hot spots in the location you will be traveling, sites such as WiFinder and BT OpenZone  are a valuable resource.

As usual when we have a Bank Holiday in the UK, the volume of traffic increases on the roads, often meaning total gridlock. You can try to avoid this by planning your journey in advance to avoide traffic blackspots. The Guardian has a useful guide to areas that are expected to have large volumes of traffic. You can also plan your route using the RAC's journey planner, which helps you to avoid traffic blackspots.

For those people planning to travel by train this weekend, you might want to refer to this list of planned engineering works from National Rail as many works are carried out over the weekend leading to further disruption.

Monday 28th of May is a bank holiday in the UK. This means that there is no postal collections. Any mail sent after 11am on Saturday 26th of May will be processed and posted on Tuesday 29th of May.

The City of Derry Airport has been closed because of safety concerns after problems were found with runway drainage and bird conrtrol in the area. Ryanair have now cancelled all flights to and from the airport as of Midnight on Friday 25th May. Any passengers booked on flights are advised to contact their airline for a refund.