Forget Covid, travel is back – and it’s glorious

When I was 18 — in that coming-of-age summer before university begins — a group of friends and I bought an interrailing ticket and travelled to Berlin, Amsterdam, Milan, Venice, Budapest, Prague and the Croatian island of Hvar, over a period of three weeks. 

 Interrailing across the continent remains one of the best experiences of my life. As a sort of entry-level travelling, it was a brilliant way to reward ourselves for our hard work on our A-Levels as we explored neighbouring Europe and spent our final weeks together making memories before we all moved away to different parts of the country. 

The ease and affordability with which we can escape to the Continent has always been one of the biggest perks of living in the UK. The weather here might be rainy and bleak and our government infuriating, but cobbled streets, sandy beaches and fresh croissants have always been just a few hours away. 

Then Covid-19 struck, and travel was off the cards completely; we were confined to our houses and holidays became a distant memory (though the weather in the summer of 2020 rivalled France or Italy). 

Travel returned but with an expensive hangover; escaping to Europe was no longer as simple as stuffing a few bikinis into a rucksack and booking the cheapest Ryanair flight possible. Every trip meant checking government advice constantly, booking expensive test upon expensive test and being prepared that your trip might be cancelled at any minute, or, worse still, you might contract Covid whilst away and find yourself quarantined a long way from home. Going on holiday had always been a luxury but whether time or money was the issue, suddenly it was one even fewer could afford.

At long last, however, travel restrictions are beginning to lift as the world opens up once more and the pandemic’s grip on our freedom is slowly but surely loosening. 

Last week, some of the same school friends and I escaped Storm Eunice for the coastal town of La Cala del Moral near Malaga in Spain. We booked cheap flights, filled out a brief Spanish form confirming that we didn’t have Covid and boarded the quick three-hour flight requiring no tests to leave or return to the UK.

Not only did this make a spontaneous trip possible and affordable but it also gave the holiday back that much-needed escapism. Going away is about setting your OOO (out of office), switching off your phone and disconnecting from the stressors of life back at home — something almost impossible to do with the looming to-do list of fit to fly, Day 2 and test to release Covid testing. 

Packing was relatively stress-free (until we reached the airport and found our shared suitcase was several kilograms overweight) and touching down in Spain required only a flash of the form we filled in to let us out into the sunshine. 

With the exception of stringent mask-wearing, we enjoyed the trip with little thought given to the pandemic, stuffing our faces with tapas and spending the days sprawled out on the beach. There was no afternoon spent sacrificing precious holiday time cramped up in the apartment filling out long forms or organising strange zoom calls with someone who will watch you take a Day 2 test back at home.

It was a taste of summer and the “good old days”, a reminder of how relaxing travel and holidays can, and should, be. Amongst talk of inflation, the rising cost of living and the threat of war, it was a brief escape from reality that left us revived, renewed and a little hungover.

I’ve been checking Skyscanner constantly since we got back, ready for the next trip; eager to get back to seeing more of the world again. Test-free and (almost) stress-free travel is back and for the sake of our collective sanity, I hope it is never taken from us again.