I hope it doesn't become compulsory!

easyJet have announced that they are trialling mobile boarding passes at Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Manchester, Nice, Stansted and Southend airports.

The passes will be downloaded and stored on the traveller's mobile phone, and all the passes for a family travelling together may be on a single phone or distributed.

I can quite see the attraction for the individual passenger, or even a couple.  But how do you cope with entering the security area if you have more than two or three on a single phone?

For those of us who arrange and accompany groups, I cannot see the mobile boarding pass as being in any way a benefit - let's hope the paper option remains.

I certainly cannot see every child in a school group having his / her own pass on individual mobile phones.  Anybody who has been away with a group will know that the number of phones returning does not necessarily equal the number going out.

And for the reason mentioned before, I equally cannot see the party leaders having the students' passes.

New extended Great War tour.

Most school groups who visit the battlefields of the Great War tend to concentrate on Ypres and the Somme.  And this makes good sense - they are redolent with memory for British visitors and are easily reached.

We at Culture Trails continue to make arrangements for schools to visit these areas on short tours.

However, with the centenary of the outbreak of war rapidly approaching, we have designed a tour which takes a little longer (six or seven days), but which tries to convey the totality of the war, at least on what the Germans called the Westfront.

We travel from the point at which the Front ran into the sea in Belgium to that where it reached the Swiss border, more than eight hundred kilometres to the south-east.

On the way, we see many of the places whose names echo down to us over the years, Ypres, Arras, Verdun, as well as many less well known, at least in Britain, such as Le Linge, Pfetterhouse and St Mihiel.

If you'd like to know more, please call us on 01691 88 61 61 or e-mail greatwar@culturetrails.co.uk