Acabanes is a large 4 bedroom converted farmhouse in a small village called Thenac near Bergerac. I stayed their in October and it was a fantastic place for a week. Large and roomy. Big kitchen and living areas, plus a heated pool as well.

You can read a holiday review of the surrounding area including a stay at the house: Gordon's holiday in France.

Got back from Budapest the other weekend.

Click for report on Budapest trip . 

Gene from work found this web site that seems to be able to plan a journey from any two end points in the UK which takes into account buses, trains, tube and so on.

www.transportdirect.info 

I found out about this web site from a BBC24 web programme.

The site takes your requirements for flights and then searches across a number of sites to give you the best options. The advantage is that you don't have to do all this yourself.

The advantage is that you can usually get a cheaper return flight by coming back through a different provider.

www.skyscanner.net web site 

This is probably not appropriate for all but it worked out great for me.

Basically I need to be in London for Monday morning but I was going to be near there anyway so I decided to stay overnight in a hotel to save an early train from Bournemouth.

As I was driving, having hotel I could easily get to, park there for the next day whilst I get a tube into London and then easy for driving out again, would be great. I did some searches and found that the Ramada Jarvis hotel in Ealing was ideal.

The Post Office has some deals on travel insurance and commission free currency exchange.

One strange thing that I found when I visited the Post Office to get some Euros was that I could only exchange physical cash. They would not let me use a debit card for payment. I then had to use the debit card to get some money out, from the same counter person, they handed it over to me, I then handed it back. Oh what fun, and delay to everybody else queuing up behind me.