EADIPtPINO Wider Still and Wider

By LESLIE ADRIAN

A picture of Lake Garda's shore in the Poly booklet has only two bodies, shapely, feminine. uncomfortably reclining on gravel and concrete. Both tell a slurs. Europe's resorts (the 'drainage system' of the affluent society that Joad never saw in full spate) are overcrowded and over- organised. Either the beach is booked by the square foot or it is 'spiaggia privata' and available from the terrace of the Grand Hotel et des Iles Borrom(5es only.

Lord Mancroft of Glob21 waxed eloquent recently on the unbearable cheapness of packaged holidays, to be capped a little later by Duncan Haws. the Lunn-Poly boss, with a plug for the unrepeatable bargain offers that are called inclu- sive travel. Profit margins must indeed be slender on an all-in fortnight in Majorca for £36 15s. or Tossa de Mar for £31 15s. The Lunn-Poly cata- logue of Everyman tours has nothing costing over £45 for fifteen days. travelling both ways by air.

But the price isn't only money, for me and people like me. I retreat from regimentation. from pre-ordained meals and recreations, from group travel even with the nicest group you could wish to put up with, from the eternal urge to be first in the queue, and the dread of getting the neck of the chicken, the rumble-seat ride, the seat in back of a post.

To avoid these I not only will pay more. I want to pay more. And the travel trade, bless their cynical old hearts (some of those good people have been couriers in their time and know what I mean), are allowing my sort to be more adven-

turous, and extravagant. by being both them- selves.

Thanks to jet flying and certain concessions such as 1TX fares costs are not crippling, though they may need some saving up for. An inclusive holiday based on an ITX fare (such as those to the United Arab Republic and the West Indies) costs little more than the normal public return air fare. The hotel accommodation and food are included. The national airline involved gets the traffic and any profits that may be made, while the tourist authority of the country reckons that it is storing up good will (political as well as folklorique) for the future. Only reliable agents who publish brochures that satisfy the airline concerned can sell these holidays.

For instance. sixteen dats in New York cost 121. where the air fare alone is £107. sixteen days in Kenya with Swan's cost £298, while the return air fare by economy jet is £241; fourteen days in the Bahamas cost £229 uhile the return fare alone is £173: seventeen da■ s in Trinidad cost £276 with a fare varying from I:249 to £279. Note, however, that the fare element in some of these holidays is so high (almost 100 per cent with some ITX tours) that supplements have to be added for better hotels and guaranteed single rooms.

It is also worth considering basing your holiday on a place served by one of the cabotage routes within the Commonwealth on which TATA rate- fixing cannot apply (including the British West Indies. Gibraltar and Hong Kong). These can be considerably cheaper than normal fares but are available only to people holding British passports.

The Swan sixteen-day tour of the archaeologi- cal sites of Mexico costs £347. with a first-class hotel, single room addition of £45 to £52. My favourite footnote is to this item: 'Holidays can be extended up to one year on request.' You can save the money some of the time, but how the blazes do any of us get time to spend as generously as that this side of senescence? It reminds me of the Club 1iditerran6e's holidays in Tahiti. They used to cost about £250 for three months. but two of the three were spent aboard a Messageries Maritimes steamer plying from Marseilles to Papeete. In those days, when I did not mind discomfort, even three months' pay before tax would not have bought that little bit of heaven. Some of those water-ski-ing, skin- diving mermen and their maids would slog and save all through a Parisian winter and spring,

then quit their jobs and go. Some, I suppose, never came back.

For those with an itch to see fairly faraway places, but lacking great funds while prepared for a pleasantly rough-and-tumble existence out of city clothes (and not regimented all that much), the Club is the thing (call them at their new home, Regent 3688 if you feel inspired. Their address is 40 Conduit Street. WI). It adheres closely enough to its Mediterranean formula still, with a minor empire dotted around Italy, Sicily, Greece. Corfu. Morocco, Tunisia and Israel. La on parte francais with a soupcon of franglais. And you don't half get suntanned.

Club Med. holidays cost between £50 and £80 for two weeks, with free third weeks at the beginning and end of the season. They are now running cruises in winter around the Mediter- ranean, too. until early April, most of them in the £60 bracket for eight days out of Marseilles, which compares well with the general run of traditional cruises, and there is only one class.

The Travel Club, not strictly a club but very friendly, runs European holidays by air, without night travel, or weekend supplements. and runs its own buses to the airports from Essex, Surrey and South London rendezvous. When Travel Club says 'inclusive' it evidently means it: every- thing possible is included, even the baggage is seen through customs and delivered straight to your room. They offer a Bermudan holiday (where the beaches are busy but spacious) for £184 and a seventy-six-day round-the-world cruise for £291 (or thirty days for £650 by air: it's always either time or money).

Madeira and the Canary Islands may sound obvious places, though not all that cheap. But, strangely, few people think of them in summer, when Madeira has a most pleasant climate, and flock there in the winter. The Madeira low season runs from April 16 to November 2, when you can save as much as £30 on a fifteen-day stay. Cooks have a fifteen-day air trip for £95 mini- mum, which goes up only about 30s. in the high winter season. To save more you have to spend more.

There are two dangers to beware of in pack-

age-deal holidays: one is the agent who sends people to countries to which he himself has -lever been; the other is the small charter-flight operator. The latter is more or less dead in Britain, although some small charter lines still operate from abroad. Nearly all the delays of recent years may be attributed to the character with small resources, unable to provide alter- native aircraft when there was a breakdown. Most ABTA registered agents use only operators of scheduled runs for charter. It is worth asking your travel agent the name of his air carrier.

There is no means of knowing whether your man has visited the country to which you want to go or not. But there are specialist agencies, and they are proud of their intimate knowledge of areas. Progressive Tours concentrate on Eastern Europe; Erna Low goes in for islands (and children's holidays); Swan's are well known for their interest in Greece and the Middle East; Orient Tours know the Holy Land (both sides); the Travel Club is working up a Caribbean connection (disastrous without personal contact, says Harry Chandler); Wayfarers are good for Russia.

Why not have a chat with the man who has actually done the spying out for the agency? If he cannot be produced at all, go somewhere else.