We could have got much cheaper flights if we had flown to and from Italy - but what a start to the holiday! So if like us you take your holidays to fit in with your bookings then we have to fly with stopovers. In our case it was £395 this year for the July, which compared with the £650 / 700 being charged for non-stop flights leaves us with no choice at all.

the annoying this is the whole of July now seems to be high season for flights, whereas they used to go up from about the middle. One of the few benefits of paying for private education was our girls finished early so we could benefit from the cheap flights. Despite finishing on the 7th July this year it made no difference to the price.[xx(]

I have to say (and this will be the start of another argument I suppose) I thought the whole point of us joing the EEC was to harmonise on things like this. Why do things never go our way? Cheap food - ha! Petrol , wine[msnmad]. So what are the benefits? Strangulation with red tape for business, loads of laws and higher cost of living. Hmmmm.