MARCH AND AUGUST 2020
Whether to travel during covid was a vexing question. In March 2020, as the coronavirus global pandemic spread its infectious tentacles around the globe, we took a calculated risk to go ahead with a skiing trip to Northern Italy.
Our destination was La Thuile, far up in the Aosta Valley, and less than five miles from the border with France. But with travel restrictions beginning to bite, and a whole degree of uncertainty around COVID, there was a question as to whether it was sensible to go at all.
At the time, ten specific towns or cities across Northern Italy were under lockdown. But we reasoned that, as none of them were remotely near the Aosta Valley, our destination was safe enough. Those locked-down cities however included Milan, through which we were due to transit. And that caused some degree of discomfort. So we rescheduled our flights to fly through Geneva instead, thus avoiding Milan and Lombardy altogether. A van and driver would then take us from Switzerland, briefly into France, and then into Italy and the Aosta Valley. Cunning eh, even if it did sound more like a Von Trapp Family escape plan rather than a wee holiday.
So we thought we’d taken reasonable measures to mitigate any risk, caught our flights and enjoyed the views of Mont Blanc as we motored through France and into Italy. We then enjoyed a whole day’s skiing before news came through that the resort would be closing that evening. There was then a mad scramble to rearrange flights to get back to the UK as quickly as possible. And ideally before any quarantine measures were imposed upon re-entering the UK. (Kudos to EasyJet for how easy they made booking/rebooking flights. No credit whatsoever to British Airways for their intransigence and general fuckwittery.) Even as we set off from La Thuile early one snowy morning, there was no certainty that the road tunnel would still be open. Or that we’d be able to cross borders into France and Switzerland. Or that our plane would actually depart Geneva.
Those worries proved unfounded and we duly got back to the UK. However the UK Government moved quicker than we did by declaring that anyone arriving from anywhere in Italy – not just the ten locked-down cities as was previously the case – would now be required to self-isolate at home for ten days. And that included us. Bummer.
We then holed-up with our skiing party at a house in Harpenden for a few days while we figured out how to manage self-isolation. We had two other adults at home to think about. They still needed to go about their daily lives, including one doctor whose daily life meant going to work in a hospital. The Government didn’t give specific advice on how to solve conundrum did they eh?
And to be honest, I wished they’d closed the resort a day earlier. I wished we’d opted not to go at all. On the one days skiing we did have, I took a seemingly innocuous tumble, and right royally buggered my knee. Until that point, I’d been skiiing rather bloody well, thank you. I limped off the mountain, saw a doctor and left the resort on crutches. Subsequent consultations would confirm I’d managed to both rupture my anterior cruciate ligament and damage my medial cruciate ligament.
So it’s fair to say that that trip was a bit of a fecking disaster.
You’d think we’d learn. But after six months of lockdown, working from home and barely leaving the confines of Richmond and Twickenham, feet were getting itchy. Overseas travel was by this time being endorsed by various Governments desperate to resurrect their economies. There was also the need to get away and get back before the end of August, if we were to get away at all. Elective surgery had not been available for the previous four or five months due to COVID, but I now had an appointment for an operation to reconstruct my knackered knee. And after that I’d be immobile for a while.
So in early August, 2020 we hopped on a flight from Heathrow and headed off to Toulouse, to visit some friends, Guy and Dian Barke, who live in the wee village of Saint Pons de Thomieres. The flights were remarkably cheap, just £230 for return flights for two people. You’d think there was a global pandemic or something. Mind you, the cost of the train from Toulouse to Mazamet caught me by surprise. For the 1.5 hour journey, it cost a whole €10 each.
A taxi driver advised that from the following day, face masks would be required in all public places in Toulouse. A train conductor instructed us to keep our masks on. So we duly carried our masks everywhere. And sometimes even wore them. The French approach to mask etiquette appeared as confused as the British and their social distancing could best be described as laissez-faire.
For the next seven days we ate and drank our way around the Languedoc region in the generous company of our very gracious hosts, sometimes masked and sometimes sans.
We enjoyed a delicious seafood lunch, washed down with a little vino, at the beachfront Biquet Plage restaurant, with views over the Med. And followed that with an afternoon on Leucat Plage itself. And a very brief dip in the rather bloody chilly Med.
Two men and a dog enjoyed a morning walk around the peaceful Lac de Vezoles, with hillsides of brilliant purple heather and extensive views over the valleys. The reward for the exercise was lunch at Le Petite Table in the village of Castigno. That was in turn followed by a visit to the Château Castigno vineyard for a tasting or seven. The vineyard, chateau and around half the village are all owned by a Belgian couple. According to their website, they found the historic estate and vineyard, instantly felt something very special, and bought the lot. Which is nice. I wouldn’t mind buying a chateau, a vineyard and half a village myself, if only I could afford it. Whatever, it’s a very pretty village and the lunch, eaten in a picture-perfect market square, was excellent.
The Orb River carves its way through the volcanic rock of Languedoc and somewhere near the picturesque Tarassac Suspension Bridge, it cuts through a ravine. And in doing creates a spectacular swimming spot. There are rapids at either end, steep-sided gorge walls on one side and a wee sandy beach on t’other. And that was that for the day. There’s something deliciously refreshing about swimming in fresh river water – free from the sand and brine of the sea, or the chlorine and pee of a swimming pool. It reminds me of swimming in Northumberland’s rivers as a young ‘un.
We had a delicious dinner in the lovely village of Olargues, overlooking the Jaur river, the subtly-lit Devil’s Bridge and the old houses clinging to the cliffs, in a restaurant run by a Danish-Filipino family. And finished off with some live music in downtown Saint Pons.
That same River Jaur, incidentally, flows through our hosts’ property. But if the Orb was refreshing, and the Med nippy, the Jaur at Saint Pons was positively Baltic. It took me about ten minutes of fannying around to take the plunge and about ten seconds to get back out again.
After a visit to a flea market in Beziers (and a cheeky purchase of some vinyl), we went for a steak lunch in one of those restaurants that subscribe to the if-you’re-only-going-to-do-one-thing-do-it-well approach to cuisine. Their menu had one item, steak, and one side, frites. Wine came in a magnum, with a cm scale to measure the amount consumed. And what they did, they did very well indeed. There’d be no need for dinner that day.
A Sunday market in St Chinian proved to be the source of some fouta, some organic soap, baskets, a rug and some artisan sausages. And probably a few other things I wasn’t aware of. Then there was a fantastic lunch of oysters, au naturel and au gratin, and buckets of moules in the seaside village of Marseillan, on the edge of the Étang de Thau lagoon.
And finally, we jumped back on the train, to spend a night in Toulouse, known as La Ville Rose due to the terra-cotta bricks used in many of its buildings. We took in the expansive town square, the Place du Capitole, and gazed at frescoes on the ceiling of the Salle des Illustres. Then meandered through the narrow streets of the old town to the Garonne River, past the renaissance mansion of Hôtel d’Assézat, and returned to Place du Capitole for much deserved wine and dinner. And of course, we wore our face masks – by now mandatory in public places in Toulouse.
After an early Tuesday morning trip to the Victor Hugo Market – so inconsiderately closed on the previous day – to stock up on cheese and sausages, it was back to the airport for the brief flight back to Heathrow.
Shortly before we had left for France, the UK Government had determined that travellers returning to the UK from Spain would need to quarantine for fourteen days. And over the past week the number of coronavirus cases in France had been continuously rising. So we’d naturally been concerned about once again being caught out and being required to self-isolate at home. And guess what…?
…there were to be no such dramas this time round and we were back home later the same day (August 11) without any restrictions.
On the evening of Thursday August 13, 2020, the UK Government announced that France was to be removed from their green list of countries from which travellers did not need to quarantine. Returning tourists were given until 4am (?!) on the morning of Saturday August 15 to get back to the UK without needing to quarantine.
This time we made it back in time, without any Great Escape-style plans and without any self-isolation. Although it did make me wonder that maybe we should have just stayed at home in the first place? Did we really need to go to France for a week? Could we not have stayed at home and enjoyed the British weather (upon our return it was as hot in Twickenham as it had been in Toulouse)? Were we not just adding to the overall problem?
Throughout the whole coronavirus situation I’d been an advocate of following the broader philosophical principles of the need to stay at home and avoid contact with people, rather than needing to be hand-held by government advice or, even worse, trying to find ways around that guidance. To extensively paraphrase JFK, “Ask not how you can circumvent government guidelines, but ask how you can contribute to controlling coronavirus.” Yet here I was being blatantly hypocritical when it came to a week in the sun, with some friends, and away from the stresses of work.
Travel and be damned? Maybe not in this case.
Had similar challenges travelling during 2020? Share your thoughts on travelling – or not – during coronavirus in the comments box below.