scot47

Pulaski is right. People have to learn that there are risks inherent in travel. Over the last few decades we did too much travelling. We have to "unlearn" that. Stay at home !

VEDShappy

Easy to say when flights were booked in early February......

Pulaski

I know this - we had tickets booked for the end of May to visit my elderly mother, but obviously those tickets were canceled, and we have no clear plan as to when a trip will be reasonable and practical. Our best tentative guess is that will be December 2021.

I am in touch with my mother every few days, but she knows as well as we do that travel at the moment is not sensible (that's our opinion, you are entitled to a different one) and so far as she expresses any preference, it is that we don't travel. If it makes any difference to your perception, my mother is of an age where there is a significant risk she won't survive 18 months even if she doesn't catch coronavirus.

I am not sure of the relevance, but I don't have a villa either, and while some things I have predicted correctly, my main point was that nobody knows the future, but some seem to blithely assume that this pandemic will soon be over and everything will "be back to normal", and I would contend that is is they who are the fools!

You don't have to agree with me, but I see no prospect of things returning to normal within 12 months. Without a vaccine it could be 3-4 years before things stabilize, and the situation at the time of stabilization may look a lot different from normality in 2019.
Our flights were booked last year, but our dispassionate assessment in April was that not only was travel going to be impractical for the times of our flights, but that there were going to be too many uncertainties to rebook any flights this year, and so far that assessment has been correct. Hence my post above about people who rushed to the airport, and have now found their plans in ruins (and this was primarily an observation about holidaymakers, hence the reference to restaurants and hotel rooms, not those travelling for work or to return "home").

It was fairly widely reported back in the spring, although buried in a lot of political noise and very poor reporting, that the pandemic would run a 2-3 year course, unless a vaccine was found, and that a vaccine would take until at least Q2 or Q3 of 2021 to be rolled out. As of today, the timescale is still considered to be the most optimistic one. Those aren't my predictions, or those of politicians, but of the medical scientists working on the vaccines and epidemiologists.
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scot47

I had flights booked to visit my grandchildren. I had to cancel. EHIC will not be valid after 31 December. If I want to visit them after that I will have to pay 500 Euros for Dialysis treatment for 3 sessions. I just accepted this although it means it is now unlikely that I will see them again. So it goes.

BEVS

Yes ! Exactly this.

Pollyana

Not that easy to just stay at home when home and everyone you care about is 12,000 miles away. Hopeully the virus will finish me off before the depression does.

SanNico

I find it very frustrating that UK Plc treat the country as a single entity, rather than highlighting the hotspots. Even in the UK they are highlighting hotspots without narrowing it down to individual sub-areas which is why we see places like Leicester being locked down. My son traveled to the UK on Saturday, luckily, to stay for a week and then bring his sisters back for a few weeks. So far it looks like the inbound flight is going ahead. Easyjet have 124 seats booked on the flight and have hiked the price from 40 to 256GBP so I find it unlikely they will cancel it as they need to get holidaymakers home.
I'm sure they will realise how absurd this really is but since they seem unable to admit mistakes or fine tune things, they will hold it for three weeks rather than back down.

BEVS

Heck . I really do hope you will get to see and be with your family again somehow. It takes you so much planning and care to do this.

It is a very tough one. We have to accept that everything has changed as we have no choice in that at all but that doesn't mean it is easy or painless to do. Very far from that for so many of us eh?

Poll. You feel that bad , you get off to the quacks pronto , right now, no messing. Have a big think. Maybe now is the time to just go home. That will be tough but you would be where you wanted to be & I am sure your lovely family will help you work everything out somehow.

Otherwise as Lion says we all just KBO until we find our assorted individual solutions or acceptance .

BEVS

I think the problem with hotspots is that hotspots can pop up anywhere at any time from anyone from anywhere. One wants no community transmission but some countries haven't adopted this approach & so the people are now reaping the result of that.

VEDShappy

Yes, travel is a risk. It always has been, but it's not stopped people doing it.

To blithely say that we should learn to travel less or stay at home is a simplistic, blanket approach, much like the UK government's that provoked this thread.

We all choose to travel in the manner we do for our own reasons. There will be some who took themselves off on holiday at the first opportunity and others who have long standing arrangements who have chosen to cancel them.

We make our own choices based on the information available at the time
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bobd22

I couldn't agree more also everyone has different circumstances and needs when it comes to needing to travel. Holidaying is one thing but not the only requirement to travel between the UK and Spain or elsewhere. We do have to accept the fact that things can change very quickly re travel in these times of covid. However the 2 week quarantine may be acceptable to some to actually achieve what ever they need to achieve in the other country. That is down to the individual to assess and decide on. The world is not going to simply close down in a permanent lock down for the next 18 months.

thegolfer

The whole quarantine thing is an absolute con and simply Boris and Rishi trying to make U.K citizens holiday and spend its money in U.K. But LozzR still back n fore to France with lardboi but borders not closed yet.

Chipmonk

[QUOTE=thegolfer;12887956]The whole quarantine thing is an absolute con and simply Boris and Rishi trying to make U.K citizens holiday and spend its money in U.K. But LozzR still back n fore to France with lardboi but borders not closed

So why did they create air bridges in the first place if they wanted everyone to holiday in uk?

Fredbargate

To the best of my knowledge at the moment you could fly to Gibraltar, walk across the frontier and catch a bus to Torremolinos for your holiday then return to Gibraltar for your flight home with no quarantine, who is to know?
On the Beeb this morning New York was mentioned in conjuction with Florida as an example of highlighting hotspots, so similar to above fly to Miami take an internal flight to New York or even hire a car etc.

Joppa

When you return to UK, you have to complete UK locator form, and one of the questions is to list every country you have travelled through in the last 14 days. So you have to lie if you were in Spain prior to catching your flight in Gibraltar.