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Many thanks drxx, very helpful!

For me this was a puzzle of two halves. The grid fill was reasonably straightforward although I was held up for a time in the NW corner. I then made my life unnecessarily difficult by doing an internet search for the four places visited on the journey. This took me down a very deep rabbit hole that it took me a full day to reemerge from.

Once back on the right track things fell into place relatively quickly, although I was held up again by the search for the keyword. Re-reading the source material was very enjoyable and triggered the PDM. I will miss Dysart's puzzles.

A heartfelt thank you to JEG for enabling us to pursue this strange hobby of ours, and best of luck to the new marker who is taking up this daunting task.

Working my way through I have trouble with 40dn: "Offer spurned...."
I have 1st and last two letters and there is only one word that matches the definition in the clue's last two words. But i can't parse the rest of the clue!

I parsed it as a four-letter synonym for "offer", less abbreviated single letter for "my" (see Chambers) plus the usual two-letter US city.

Thanks muraria, I had overlooked m' as in m'lady, m'lud. Now, back to the playfair which I always find hard work.

I have a full grid apart from coded unchecked cells and 2 other cells. Unfortunately I haven't guessed 2a 12a, can find no journey online that visits the four places, have tried the usual play fair solvers which don't work for the reasons already outlined and I can't figure out the playfair grid from the snippets of encoding I have.

So I'm stuck. Did anyone else figure out the play fair key word without guessing any other bit of the puzzle?

Sounds like you’ve been unlucky, sh. If you google the places in a different order, you should find a hit. (Try them c b d a in alphabetical order). Alternatively there is a well-known thematic name in the grid. You’d be unfortunate if one of your missing cells was in it

Actually the name passes through a single unchecked encoded letter, my apologies, so maybe that’s not such an easy spot …

Thanks dodgepot, googling them in that order did the trick. Led to 2 12, which enabled me to figure out the code phrase and the encoded title.

Will leave the grid stare til tomorrow. Only other loose end is 24a - is the first letter 'a'?

Thanks

Glad it helped, sh. I’m not privy to the algorithms of search engines, so I was mildly surprised it mattered, but worth remembering, I guess. Yes, 24a starts with A. Wordplay the innards of an outing/girl’s name