The River Dart Trail is a lovely walking route. As well as being surrounded by the stunning Devon countryside, it’s also quite an educational trip too taking you through various sites of historic interest. The whole walking route is 27 miles in total which you can do several days or you can choose sections to tackle for a day trip. The most popular starting point if you are doing the whole trip is Torbay, finishing up in Dartmouth. The walk itself is moderate to easy, with some gradients to climb, but nothing too difficult.

The River Thames has a whole raft of walking routes. Being a very long river, it’s easy to start on a section anywhere you fancy really. However, if you really had to pick a special spot, Radcot Bridge in the Cotswolds is a good place to hike. Named as one of the most beautiful parts of the upper Thames, it takes you from Radcot, walking upstream to Grafton Lock. There’s plenty of wildlife as well as stunning English countryside. For hikers who like a bit of history, a walking route along the Thames through Abingdon is a must as it takes in Roman ruins and historic buildings along the way.

Another great riverside walking route is a hike along the River Tyne. At 62 miles long, I don’t suggest you walk the entire length of it. I’m not even sure that it’s possible. You can however, walk the 10 miles from Newcastle city centre upstream to Heddon-on-the-Wall. This walk could be more of a cultural hike really as you’ll spend most of the day walking through the city. The regenerated Quayside is interesting to look at as well as the famous Tyne and Millennium Bridges. The biggest plus for me is reaching Heddon-on-the-Wall, which is the starting point of Hadrian’s Wall. By continuing to Chollerford, you start to get more entrenched in Roman history, passing turrets and mile-castles as you walk.

We are nothing if not informative in this travel blog, so I thought you might be interested to find out what happens to your checked in wheeled luggage after you have handed it over. It might also reveal some information on why, sometimes, it comes out battered or bruised, if, of course, it comes out at all!

The whole baggage handling system is a procedure made of three parts. The first part is to transfer your luggage set from check in, to the departure gate. Then, if you are flying long-haul, then the suitcase holding all of your travel necessities needs to ensure that it makes the connecting flight and is travelling with you. Last of all, after touchdown, it needs to be waiting for you on the carousel.

In an ideal world, your new set of luggage should arrive on the carousel at precisely the same time you walk up to it to collect it, but life, of course, is not so simple.

If you ever flown from a London airport, it’s plain to see that the luggage system has taken its inspiration from the M25 and regularly has jams, blockages and accidents causing the entire thing to collapse in a heap. Terminal 5 is your perfect example!

A lot of the mistakes, Terminal 5 aside, are human error. The moment everyone’s luggage set arrives at the departure gate; it is manually offloaded and put on a conveyor belt onto the plane. This is perhaps the moment of truth … you are already on the plane waiting to take off, so you won’t know if your bag was left on the tarmac until you arrive at your destination.

If, like me and several other billion people out there, you like to make sure you have your MP3 Player on you for those lonely moments when you find yourself stuck on a bus in traffic, jogging through the park on a sunny day or even walking between meetings, then it is without doubt one of the first things you pack when going on holiday. If, however, you make up the rest of the billions not yet in tune (pardon the pun) with the portable music world, then listen up.

It hasn’t always been a habit of mine, strolling the busy streets of London, earphones in place. Don’t get me wrong, I am a self-confessed music buff and do own my own MP3 Player (albeit with a debatable selection of songs), but the idea of being cocooned in my own little world and constantly carrying around my little gadget didn’t appeal. That is, until one year when I decided to go off and travel the world alone…

Picture this; you’re halfway through a six hour bus journey in deepest Cambodia. Do you know how handy your ‘little gadget’ becomes when faced with the (unwanted) mumblings of a random fellow passenger? I’m sure you can imagine. Or when the annoying old lady who has a ‘This is Your Life’ moment insists on sharing every single minute of her sixty-five years with you while you’re trying to sleep? With an MP3 player, it’s a case of switch it on and yourself off. Ohhh how I wished I’d brought it along. It could have saved me endless hours of making small-talk with over-excited fellow travellers.

What’s more, I’ve recently discovered that we, and by ‘we’ I mean all those MP3-obsessives out there, can now even download guided tours of certain UK cities onto your player thanks to a company called tourist-tracks.com. So, forget the hassle of lugging around your 500 page guide book, slip your 2G, 2.8 inch MP3 Player into your pocket and brush up on your local knowledge!

Pre-travels, my player would have been gathering dust in the darkest corner of my bedroom. It now holds a permanent place in my handbag (I’ve even bought a special protective cover for it) and keeps me company when I’m on the move. I’ve already begun thinking about where to explore next - MP3 player in hand, of course!

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