Adam Boulton Diary: The Great British Holiday is back

The Commons and Lords are in recess, the Prime Minister is walking the dog at Chequers, so I’m on holiday. The Parliamentary calendar only impacts the diary of a political journalist tangentially but I’ve always downed tools in August. In large part for fear of slow news days stretching to the crack of doom and the dreadful prospect of having to drive to somewhere like Guildford to record an interview with an MP who I would normally cross Parliament Street to avoid. (No offence to any current or past members for Guildford intended or to the city itself.)

The Covid outbreak and consequent lockdown restrictions have added new levels of complexity to “getting away” – starting with, can you get away? And where can you get away to? Conundrums which have already proved too difficult for a pair of government ministers, Grant Shapps and Paul Scully.

We citizens of the UK have long been enthusiastic travellers. In 2018 we took 126.2m international flights accounting for 8.6% of the global total, the largest share ahead of the Americans (7.6%) and the Chinese (6.6%). Foreigners may sneer that we are desperate to escape our climate. No matter, there are plenty of glum Spanish politicians, hoteliers and bar staff bemoaning that without the raucous Brits on holiday there won’t be a proper Ibiza, Costa del Sol, or Ramblas this year in our most popular country of destination.

Thanks to Covid-19, aviation and hospitality industries are flat on their backs. Thousands of job losses and permanent flight and plane cancellations have already been announced. The hope is that things will get back to normal by next year, or 2022, or 2023 at the latest. That last date is the gloomy expectation of British Airways. But will they? The Great British Holiday may be just one of the many sides of life for which the outbreak is accelerating trends that were already underway.

Before anyone had thought about bat faeces in wet markets in Wuhan City, younger Britons were increasingly inclined to devote their time off to UK based holidays. Barclays Bank dubbed this trend The Great British Staycation and identified a widening gap between those under 45 warming, so to speak, to staying at home, and the older generations, roughly three quarters of whom wanted to get the hell out of here.

In large part this is a credit to the domestic service sector which was burgeoning before Covid and to which the government is now giving priority support. In my years on the road as a reporter I used to find going away in Britain to be a costly penance, while hotels abroad were typically a bonus.

Before Covid things had changed. The rising generation of stay-at-homers cite affordability, comfort and convenience as their main reasons. Average expenditure on a domestic holiday was £904 compared to £2,406.

The equipment has got better too. My grown-up children cheerfully contemplate going camping in Wales, whereas my boyhood experiences of Tent-o-Matics and exploding air beds have scarred me for life. Decent kit – for walking, biking, climbing and water – has greatly expanded the range of activities which can be undertaken pleasurably at home. The life-risking over-confidence inspired by wearing lycra is perhaps its greatest downside.

In the last decade according to an ONS Statista survey, 48% holidayed in the UK and abroad, 24% at home only, and 16% exclusively abroad. That means that one in eight of us didn’t go away for holidays at all. Today programme presenters wanting to know when “we” can go safely back to the warm south seem as behind the times as memories of the Blair family’s villa holidays in Italy and the Caribbean. The Camerons hit the Zeitgeist better with body-surfing in Cornwall.  Like so much else of her premiership Theresa May’s bummels were both nostalgic and rather niche. Boris Johnson typically has the best of both worlds – Christmas at someone else’s expense in Mustique, family holiday homes in Greece and on Exmoor, and, now, the Chequers mansion in Buckinghamshire.

Over the past half century foreign travel has become steadily more inconvenient. Urban terrorism bequeathed unavoidable security checks at airports, leading to queues for magnetic arches, bag searches and bans on liquids on board.

Health concerns about Covid have added the compulsory wearing of masks for the duration of a journey, hand sanitiser and, for some countries, temperature checks and other tests, and enforced quarantine mostly of a fortnight’s duration. Ski-ing breaks will not be exempt, especially since Alpine resorts turned out to be super spreaders of the virus last winter.

Brexit at the end of the year will add a new level of bureaucracy for travellers at sea ports. Drivers on the continent, including the most popular destinations of Spain, Italy and France, will need extra licences and insurance, and all British visitors will have to arrange private health insurance. Passports for pets will no longer be valid.

So Scotland, Cornwall and the Lake District look more attractive than ever. Unfortunately those already there now regard many potential holiday incomers with suspicion if not hostility. Aficionados of 1970s cinema won’t quickly forget the Straw Dogs and Wicker Man vibes emanating from self-declared “locals” during lockdown.

Especially if you are lucky to have access to a bit of greenery, my advice to anyone on holiday this summer is stay at home. It’s not ideal. Early enforced experiments have already confirmed my prejudice that it is next to impossible to dine al fresco on an English evening without catching a chill. But right now going abroad is bloodier than ever and there may not even be a welcome waiting in the valleys.