Where is the best beach retreat to head to in Cuba?

Simon Calder answers your questions on getaways to Varadero and Rome, the state of the TransPennine Express and whether it’s possible to bag an easyJet bargain

Varadero delivers and is also easy to build into a tour of the island (iStock)

Q Can you recommend a Cuban beach? I’m hoping to go there independently in November and want to find the best.

Jane W

A Mass tourism to Cuba began at Varadero – on a peninsula poking out into the Atlantic about two hours east of Havana and, conveniently, less than 100 miles south of the Florida Keys. Americans stopped going to Cuba in large numbers in the late 1950s, during and after the revolution on the island. But Varadero has remained central to Cuban tourism and is still by far the biggest resort. For classic sand, and a backdrop of plenty of activities with good excursions on offer, Varadero delivers; it is also easy to build into a tour of the island. The other north-coast beaches, notably Cayo Coco and Guadalavaca, are less appealing – but at the far west, Santa Lucia and Cayo Jutias are lovely with hardly any tourists.

Personally, I much prefer the southern shores. Playa Giron, where the failed US-backed invasion in 1961 took place, is a good choice with the unusual backdrop of a museum to the successful defence of the revolution. I imagine your itinerary will include the Unesco-listed city of Trinidad: an outstanding Spanish colonial location in its own right. It happens to have a couple of decent resort hotels at Playa Ancon about 10km from the centre. If you are staying in Trinidad for a few days, a trip out to the beach will be easy to organise.

My top choice, though, is in the southeast of Cuba. You will see on the map that this end of the island is anvil-shaped, with a fairly straight shore running east-west. At the western end are the Sierra Maestra mountains, where the revolution took root in the late 1950s. You may want to explore this range, and perhaps do some hiking. If so, a good base is the resort of Marea del Portillo. A pretty beach (albeit with grey sand rather than white) fills the bay, with a decent all-inclusive property catering to independent travellers staying a night or two.

November is a good time to visit Cuba in terms of value and absence of crowds. But because it is still the tail end of the hurricane season, the later in the month you can leave it, the better.

The struggling rail service has left commuters in the lurch for months (PA)

Q I am a long-suffering commuter on TransPennine Express. Do you honestly think the stripping of the contract will make any difference?

Richard H

A In the short term, not a jot. I am a regular user of TransPennine Express (TPE), which connects Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York, Hull, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. When things are running normally, the journeys are usually excellent. But for many months cancellations, often at very short notice, have been rife. The government is now picking up management of the services as an Operator of Last Resort – effectively nationalising the service “to achieve the performance levels passengers deserve, and that the northern economy needs”.

But ending the contract with FirstGroup and taking TransPennine Express into public ownership will have no immediate impact on the profound problems faced by passengers. Within 17 hours of the announcement, another round of national rail strikes began:

train drivers belonging to the Aslef union are halting all TransPennine services today, as well as on 31 May and 3 June, while members of the RMT union will walk out tomorrow, with most trains cancelled. Until the government and the unions reach a settlement, planning any journey more than two weeks ahead – the minimum notice of a strike that unions must give – will be impossible.

The problems at TPE run much deeper, though. The company has been blaming cancellations on “higher-than-normal sickness levels” and “a training backlog as a direct result of Covid”. During the pandemic, TransPennine Express and other operators ran thousands of trains with hardly any passengers – but could not easily train new drivers. Relations with the train drivers’ union are toxic, with Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, saying: “TPE management is famous throughout the railway industry for its confrontational approach.” A ban on rest-day working is adding to the problems.

Ministers hope that nationalising TransPennine Express will help to reset “both the contract and the underlying relationships”. It may be that a fresh approach will help to provide more resilience. But a cynic would say that improvements – notably the recruitment and training of more drivers – would have happened anyway. Meanwhile, like you, I shall keep hoping for improvement.

The River Tiber with Rome’s landmarks lit up (Getty/iStock)

Q My husband would like to take me on a city break in June for three to five days – probably Rome or Barcelona. Any top tips on who to book it through, such as Trivago or Expedia?

Monette O

A When booking city breaks I always try to make it a package – flights and accommodation in a single transaction – and Expedia can do that. The company also has an encyclopaedic range of flights and hotels, and it is well worth checking out the deals that are available. My default settings, though, are for the three UK airlines that offer good city-break packages based on their own flights: British Airways, easyJet and Jet2. The “holidays” part of their offering involves adding a hotel to outbound and inbound flights, and often securing a decent discount for combining the two.

Looking at London Heathrow to Rome, for example, travelling out on 1 June and back on 5 June (after a four-night stay), the cheapest British Airways flights, with one piece of checked-in luggage per person, cost £392 return. Staying at the four-star Barcelo Aran Mantegna for four nights adds £220 per person to the cost – saving a total of £67 booking direct with the hotel and conferring the benefits of a package holiday. For example, if a French air traffic control strike scuppers your plans with your outbound flight cancelled, you will automatically get a full refund of the £612 per person because the package holiday provider (in this case BA) must return all your money if it cannot provide the trip you booked.

Having said that, personally I would save both Rome and Barcelona for November or January – months when you will get far lower prices and a much better experience, due to the absence of crowds. In June, I would look instead at Porto in Portugal: a superb city with a beach attached. British Airways Holidays wants £712 including a four-night room-only stay at the excellent Yotel, but easyJet Holidays will do you a deal for £533 with flights from Gatwick and accommodation at the four-start Vila Gale boutique property, including breakfast. That’s the one I would go for.

In January, the airline was offering one-month long trips to Egypt for £630 (iStock)

Q In January you reported on an all-inclusive deal to Egypt for a month for around £600. I am a pensioner living in Scotland and would love to escape in January 2024. Will the deal be repeated?

Marlyn A

A At the start of January, I flew to Hurghada in Egypt to talk to the lucky people who had managed to take advantage of an astonishingly good easyJet Holidays bargain. For as little as £630, they enjoyed one month at a five-star all-inclusive resort including flights from Bristol, Manchester or one of the London airports – with checked luggage and transfers from the airport to the hotel thrown in.

The company created a very successful public relations campaign claiming that holidaymakers would be better off spending January in Egypt rather than at home, what with high energy bills and expensive food. The proposition got loads of coverage. But as I quickly discovered when I went there in on the first flight from Gatwick, only about a dozen people were able to avail of the deal. The vast majority of easyJet Holidays customers were actually paying nearly twice as much. The going rate for four weeks of all-inclusive accommodation plus flights to and from Egypt in the very low season is at least £1,000.

What are the chances the deal will be repeated next winter? I imagine easyJet Holidays may decide it is well worth losing (say) £5,000 on a dozen similar packages in January 2024 in the hope that the media will buy another such stunt. But if the company does go ahead with the same deal, only the very fortunate or the very dedicated are likely to secure the bargain. In any event, there is frankly no chance that any Scottish airports will be included in the deal. The extra 40 minutes’ flying time to and from Edinburgh or Glasgow to Hurghada, compared with Manchester flights, makes Scotland to the Red Sea inaccessible for a there-and-back journey with the same crew and a full aircraft.

I agree that a January getaway is lovely, but from Scotland, I suggest you aim instead for the ever-reliable Canary Islands. You won't get a holiday for just £20 per day, but if you are flexible with timings, there is no reason why you should spend more than £1,000 on taking most of January off.

Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder