A Holiday Disappointment

Well it's been another glorious week weather-wise. Whilst I've long since accepted one day seems to roll into another, all that glorious sunshine certainly brings a holiday vibe to daily proceedings.

When it comes to vacations, we are not accustomed to booking months and months in advance. I think, we could be described as opportune travellers and even our air flights to New Zealand have generally only been reserved 8 or so weeks beforehand.

However, last year, following on from that wonderful tour around Albania back in 2015 and totally contrary to all instincts, we booked a trip to Montenegro leaving on 17th June. With our EUrevoir travels abandoned or postponed as a consequence of the pandemic, Montenegro has been the little gem to look forward to. Except, obviously, like every other foreign traveller at the moment, the anticipation has been countered by trepidation, not least when I read that its health system is regarded as below par for Europe.

Consequently, I signed up for Foreign Office updates for tourists visiting Montenegro and after sighing deeply with both regret and relief when the Government advised against all foreign travel, have been following changes intently. Like so many countries, Montenegro acted resolutely and quickly in seeking to control the virus; the updates have warned me of curfews, prohibition on entry to foreigners, quarantine periods and suspension of travel between regions. Inevitably, therefore, we have been accustoming ourselves to the fact that this is one trip that we would not be making but until you actually receive confirmation of cancellation there is always a glimmer of possibility.

Moreover that glimmer lived on, when, at the beginning of last week, Montenegro was proudly able to declare itself the first European nation to be virus free. Unfortunately by that stage the glimmer had become something of a fear too and I found myself e-mailing the hotel to check when it was planning to re-open. I received a response indicating 1st July (phew!) but earlier if permitted (panic!). 

Private and public beaches are opening there subject to social distancing and meals in restaurants will be available too, so long as there is hand sanitiser and no self service. Definite holiday potential, I thought, quaking as I did so and checking my e-mails again for notification that our flights were cancelled but still nothing.

For a moment I had a tinge of self doubt. Despite all this talk of relaxing the lockdown restrictions, surely the Foreign Office wasn't going to lift its ban on non-essential travel to permit holidays? With so much noise about airlines looking to resume some flights in mid-June, we convinced ourselves it could be a distinct possibility. Idle chatter turned to the need to start packing one hour and the odds on contracting the virus mid-air the next. Should we cancel and claim on our travel insurance losing only a nominal excess or hang on and be able to reclaim the whole amount when the operator surely withdrew the flight?

Then Montenegro announced that it intended to open its borders from 1st June to travellers from Europe. The fear gripped tighter although commonsense suggested it surely wouldn't throw away its virus free status so easily, and meantime we told each other to get on with filling those suitcases. It turns out that to enter Montenegro you must come from a country with fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 population; that had to mean we couldn't possibly be allowed entry. We may believe infections in the UK are on a downward trajectory but to reduce to that level by our departure date, surely that would not be possible. Perhaps the operator thought otherwise because still no cancellation notice arrived. I even tried to persuade myself that it would be worth risking an air flight with a mask on just to revel in a Covid-free destination.

Finally the Foreign Office website listed the countries from which people could travel to Montenegro. I kid you not, it reads like the final entries for the Eurovision Song Contest; even Azerbaijan is there! The United Kingdom is not; that's "nul points" to the UK for its handling of the pandemic. 

The operator finally took notice and we received an e-mailed cancellation.

Were we euphoric? No. I confess, I felt strangely despondent. The truth is we'd convinced ourselves weeks ago that we wouldn't be able to go; we were frightened that we might sleepwalk into having to do so but when it was established that we couldn't go, the reality of the limitations this virus has placed on our lives sunk in once more. We no longer have any  travel plans (foreign or otherwise) to look forward to. Instead we opened a bottle of wine, toasted the British sunshine and got on with our staycation retirement.