I admire Simon Calder, the Independent’s travel correspondent, enormously.
In a world where many travel articles are sponsored or the result of freebies, Calder seems genuinely independent (no pun intended).
As a freelance journalist and broadcaster he has also created an extraordinary niche for himself as the go to expert for travel stories on the BBC and elsewhere.
To achieve this he must work very hard and be extremely obliging at all times of day or night. And he does it without ever sounding less than convivial or knowledgeable.
Better still he rarely makes a drama out of a crisis. His contributions are heavy on information but never strident or over-hyped. And if he doesn’t have the answer to something he will admit it.
In other words, Simon Calder is a journalist you can trust.
I admire too the fact that despite the Independent’s long-standing problems (it is now online only) Calder - who joined the paper in 1994 - has remained loyal.
He must I’m sure have received more lucrative offers but the Independent must suit him.
I mention all this because his latest column, published today, is a bit disappointing. It certainly doesn’t live up to the clickbait headline, ‘Smoking confessions of a teenage hitchhiker’.
Essentially it’s about Interrailing around Europe and the fact that:
Thanks to a flash sale marking the 50th anniversary of the scheme, you can buy three months of unlimited travel for just £375.
Aside from the fact that that is phenomenally good value, the subject is framed by the fact that Calder was a teenage smoker whose habit left him too poor to Interrail when he was young.
I’m surprised he would link the two because I met him once, very briefly, in 2012 and he didn’t strike me as someone who would have a pop at smoking.
He was friendly and inquisitive and I liked him at once:
Simon Calder, the Independent's effervescent travel editor, is an expert on holiday breaks long and short and on Saturday we shared a sofa in the Green Room at Television Centre.
Simon is a former smoker but he's not an anti-smoker. He asked me about smoker-friendly destinations and I said I thought that Eastern Europe and cities such as Prague are the most welcoming, although the situation is changing.
Ten years later however he writes:
Smoking, as you know, is both stupid and expensive …
As a teenager in Crawley, nicotine addiction was an easy habit to acquire. And apart from the medical and atmospheric harm it caused, smoking also came with a considerable financial hit.
We are then told that because of his smoking habit buying that ‘precious ticket to all corners of Europe was tantalisingly beyond reach’.
The good news?
I finally gave up smoking aged 34, following a couple of flights on which my fundamental human right to spread noxious gases around the cabin had been banned by the airline.
Now, thanks to Interrail’s 50th anniversary offer:
This is the best of times to be a traveller on the rails of Europe. But no smoking, OK?
Perhaps he’s just pandering to his editors but it’s disappointing that someone I previously thought of as a free spirit should include so many anti-smoking digs in an article about rail travel.
Perhaps I should remind him of his request for information about smoker-friendly holiday destinations.
Speaking of which, any thoughts so I can update this 2012 post?