short term [6 months] saving to go travelling

Your best bet is an instant access mini cash ISA if you have not already used up your ISA allowance for the year. You can put in a maximum of £3,000 in a tax year. However, once you withdraw any of it, it is lost money.

E.g. If you put £2,000 in a cash ISA and withdraw £1,000 you can only put another £1,000 in (As you had already put £2,000 of your £3,000 allowance in). If you put £3,000 in and take it out then you cannot put the £3,000 back in.

You have until 5th April 2005 to use your 2004/05 ISA allowance and then it is gone for good. This will pay you the highest rate of interest if you are a basic or higher rate tax payer but it's also the best place if you can to put money aside for the future as the mini cash ISA allowance will soon be dropping to £1,000 a year.

The current top payer is the Abbey Postal ISA which will be going up to 5.1% net in July. Martin's affiliated link to a savings comparison site moneysupermarket.com is shown here

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/buys.phtml#DST

After that the new Cahoot Savings Account is probably your best bet. It is a normal easy access savings account and pays 5.5% gross interest on balances up to £50,000. This account was only launched yesterday and is not yet up on moneysupermarket but you can apply here.

http://www.cahoot.co.uk/cahoot_products/cahoot_savings/frameset_savings_easy_access.html

If you are a non tax payer then this will give you the highest short term return on your money.