Are we finally getting back to normal? What even is normal anymore? Nobody seems to know. But, finally, after what seems like forever, travel restrictions are lifting and it is getting easier to jump on a flight and run for the sun.
Not wanting to jinx things, but this could be the year that we finally get to go on holiday again, see friends and family and get to see more of the world than our back gardens.
You now don’t need any tests (as long as you are fully vaccinated) to travel between the UK and France. That’s it – NO MORE TESTS (cue small happy dance and smiling emoji). No more planning a trip with the precision of a military operation, no more paying more than the price of the air fare to get someone to stick something obscenely far up your nose and waiting with baited breath for the result.
I speak from experience. During last year I travelled back and forth between the UK and France more times than I care to remember. Every trip would be accompanied by a frantic online search to find out what the current regulations were as they were changing quicker than the weather. My vaccination certificate is in my maiden name, which is a apparently a cunning French trick, so I had to carry my marriage certificate with me. The first time I went back I practically had a lever arch file full of documents and was shaking as I had to explain to customs why I really, really was allowed to come back. I’ve had more COVID tests than I’ve had hot dinners and became professional at lowering my mask and trying not to cry or giggle. I became adept at finding the cheapest test centres in Central London and I can assemble a lateral flow test with my eyes closed in a moving vehicle.
A Christmas to remember…
Two weeks before Christmas I was in London, my flight home was booked for 21st December. And then Omnicrom hit. People were testing positive in their droves and I knew I had to have a negative test to get back home for Christmas. This was looking increasingly unlikely by the day and my best friend was on notice that I would potentially be spending Christmas, self-isolating with a lot of wine in his spare room. This was not a thought that filled me with Christmas joy – or probably him. Then, a week before, I was due to fly out my client got COVID. Panic hit, I’d spent two hours the day before with him in an extremely confined space – I’d got to be positive. The spare room was looking inevitable. I have rarely been as nervous as I was doing a lateral flow test in the Old Bailey Bar Mess (with wig and gown still on) and waiting for the tell-tale little lines to show themselves.
By some Christmas miracle I was negative. A fit to fly test was booked within the hour and my flight booked for the next day. I practically ran out of London and I don’t think I have ever been more grateful to have a Ryanair sandwich. I even splashed out on the cocktail package due to the devastating loss of the Champagne Bar at Stansted (which was the only highlight of travelling from Stansted airport).
Hopefully, those days are now behind us. Hopefully, one day, we will look back at them with some form of nostalgia and lateral flow tests will be confined to history.
Now, surely, it is the time to make good on all those promises you made during the long, seemingly endless days of lockdown; to see the world, to grab life with both hands and to not put things off til tomorrow that you can do today.
Make one of those things booking your trip to Fontalbe. We have one week in July still available (2nd July) and one week in August (27th August) and September is still available, which, in my humble opinion, is the best time to be here.
I won’t lie, the last couple of years have been incredibly tough. Nobody in their wildest dreams could have predicted that we would be opening our business and then a global pandemic would hit. You would have been laughed at for suggesting such a thing. But it did and it was horrid, but we are still here and we are waiting for you.
Grab your passport, your swimming cossie and your vaccination certificate and get booking! Come and find your next favourite place, you won’t be disappointed.
