Sooner or later, Airbnb is going to change its name to Airb, partly because it takes less time to type, and partly because it is becoming a misnomer.  Increasingly rarely is there a breakfast to go with your bed.  I am walking from John ‘o Groats to Land’s End at the moment, so I have been staying in a different town every night, save for when I have been on the hills in a tent, and not once so far has anyone offered me a fry-up.  Only once have I been offered any breakfast at all.  

Neither, by the way, have I even seen anyone in most of the places I have been staying.  All but one have been entirely remote-control operations with key codes and key safes.  I am, therefore, getting quite nostalgic for the traditional B&B.  Surely between Caithness and Cornwall there is still at least one landlady in pink fluffy slippers, walls with Artex so sharp that you could cut yourself on it, and a pervasive reek of fried bacon fat throughout the building. That is how it used to be from the 1970s to just a few years ago. You never had to book (and you couldn’t easily before the internet).  You just rolled up at about six in the evening, and if you saw a sign saying ‘vacancies’, you were in luck. 

 But the signs are becoming rarer.  Booking your holiday accommodation has become........

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