Category Archives: Travel

Scott Morrison fends off calls to reopen border as medical association urges ‘plan for 2022’

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The prime minister concedes the government has to ‘step up’ the vaccination effort as the AMA says it’s time to put a date on reopening

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, is fending off mounting pressure to reopen Australia’s borders sooner than next year, as the peak medical association joins calls for a “plan for 2022” that would see the country reopen to the rest of the world.

Following last week’s budget, which assumed that Australia’s borders would remain closed until mid next year, the Morrison government has faced a barrage of calls from business, the university sector and from within Coalition ranks for a swifter reopening of borders and a bolstering of quarantine facilities.

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‘The beginning of normality’: Algarve welcomes back British tourists

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Unemployment rose by 70% in the past year in the Portuguese region most reliant on tourism, so locals are delighted to see Kevin Rushby and today’s other arrivals

The mood at Faro airport was buoyant. Camera operators and photographers jostled to take pictures of smiling tourists, perhaps not as many as hoped, for but more are on the way. João Fernandes, head of the Algarve tourism board, was there, too, greeting arrivals while his staff handed out face masks, hand gel and sprigs of lavender.

“I feel good,” said Fernandes. “The British tourists are a very big part of our economy. In 2018 half of the passengers coming through this airport were from the UK. They stayed for six million overnights out of a total of 16 million for international visitors. And on our golf courses, 83% of visitors were British or Irish.”

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Fake Covid vaccine and test certificate market is growing, researchers say

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More than 1,200 vendors operating in the UK and worldwide, offering false documents for as little as £25

A hidden pandemic market advertising fake vaccine and test certificates for as little as £25 has grown exponentially, with more than 1,200 vendors in the UK and worldwide, researchers have found.

After UK ministers announced the return of overseas holidays – with travellers required to show proof of negative tests, and vaccine passports on the horizon – the Guardian has also learned that anti-vaxxers and people arriving in Britain from poorer nations make up a significant number of those buying forged pandemic paraphernalia.

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Booking a holiday outside the UK? Here’s what you need to know

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British travellers face challenges this year not only from the Covid crisis, but also the effects of Brexit. Here’s the lowdown

Holidaymakers in England, Scotland and Wales have been given the green light for trips abroad. Travel is restricted to a small number of countries but the early signs are that they are proving popular with those desperate for a change of scene – this week Tui announced it would be putting on bigger planes to meet demand for trips to Portugal. Bookings for flights to the island of Madeira rose by 625% straight after the green list of countries was announced, according to the website Skyscanner, while demand for Gibraltar leapt by 335%.

For most people, this will be the first trip abroad since the UK’s post-Brexit transition period ended. Here’s our guide to booking a trip in the time of Covid and after the time of the EU.

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US airline chiefs add to pressure for transatlantic travel to restart

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American, Delta and United bosses join BA and Virgin Atlantic in saying US-UK vaccination levels mean routes should reopen

Major US airlines have weighed in alongside UK carriers to urge the reopening of transatlantic travel, calling on governments in Washington and London to arrange a summit as soon as possible.

The airlines said safely reopening borders was essential for economic recovery and asked the nations’ leaders to meet before the G7, and take a decision with sufficient time for airlines to plan and restart services.

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‘Green list’ guide: the countries travellers from England can visit

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The government has revealed the destinations to which quarantine-free holidays will be allowed

The government has just announced its green list for quarantine-free international travel into England. The countries on it are Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Israel, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and Portugal, including the Azores and Madeira.

Related: England’s traffic-light system for foreign travel: all you need to know

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Covid travel rules: ‘green list’ of destinations announced for England – video

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Turkey, Maldives and Nepal are expected to be added to a red list while Israel will be among the green list countries, the UK transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced.

Popular travel destinations France and Spain were not included in the green list announced on Friday, but Shapps assured there would be a review every three weeks.

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Heathrow’s bid to raise charges to cover £2.6bn Covid costs rejected

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Airport’s plan not in the interests of consumers, says Civil Aviation Authority

Heathrow’s request to increase airport charges to recoup £2.6bn lost during the pandemic has been rejected by the UK’s aviation regulator.

The Civil Aviation Authority’s consumers and markets director, Paul Smith, described the plan as “disproportionate and not in the interests of consumers”.

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The city my grandfather used to call home no longer exists – except in our minds

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After his death, I wanted to know more about his life, and the city that made him and very nearly killed him

Every Hanukkah through my childhood, if I was visiting my grandparents’ Liverpool home, my Grandpa Oskar told me the exact same story. With a pickle on his side plate – my grandma serving up his favourite dinner of latkes, vusht (smoked sausage) and eggs – he’d recount the night during this very Jewish festival in 1937 that his family – our family – fled for their lives from the Nazis.

The preparations for their escape might have been secretly in motion for weeks, but the first he knew of the plan was as it was happening: he arrived home from school to be told he and his brother were going on a trip that very December night. They’d be travelling with their mum; their father – my great-grandpa – would meet them on their journey. It was only later that he’d learn their destination was England, a new permanent home for our family, now refugees.

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Walking around Menorca: my lockdown project is never staying still

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Having ‘washed up’ on the island due to travel restrictions, our writer finds joy in hiking the Camí de Cavalls coastal trail and swimming in secluded coves

I’m walking along a sandy path through a forest high above the flashing kingfisher-coloured coast. It smells of hot pine and wild rosemary. The sound of bells deep in the wood stops me in my tracks. Have I finally lost my mind, after months of piloting solo through the pandemic on this small island far from home?

From between the trees step a herd of cows, as if from a child’s picture book, caramel coloured, soft noses, liquid eyes and each with a collar from which a large bell swings. Mystery solved, I pick up my water bottle and keep going.

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Add India to UK travel ban list to stop Covid variant, urges scientist

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Indian coronavirus variant has potential to ‘scupper’ lockdown easing, says professor of immunology

India should be placed on the UK’s “red list” for travel after the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, according to a leading scientist.

Prof Danny Altmann, from Imperial College London, said it was “mystifying” and “confounding” that those flying in from the country were not required to stay in a hotel.

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‘This is all we could get’: Dutch tourists arrive in Rhodes for locked-down holiday

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In experiment organised by Dutch government, travellers will have to take regular Covid tests and are barred from leaving resort

A regime that might, in more normal times, resemble a boot camp has been happily embraced by 189 Dutch tourists who traded lockdown in the Netherlands for eight days of voluntary confinement at a Greek beach resort.

In an experiment devised by travel industry experts determined not to lose another season to Covid-19, the tourists arrived on the Aegean island of Rhodes on Monday as part of a test run to see if safe holidays can be arranged during the pandemic.

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The UK needs a robust border policy, but right now we can’t see if it is working

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Analysis: it is incredibly challenging to scrutinise the system because data on movement is so opaque

The official response to coronavirus at the UK border has been problematic from the start. It was not until February this year that the government introduced mandatory hotel quarantine – some 11 months after coronavirus was first recorded the UK – despite it being used in countries such as New Zealand from the off.

Even now with stricter requirements for arrivals in place, critics say the current border policy is seriously lacking. Reports claiming as many as 8,000 tourists a day are arriving in the UK have significantly fueled those concerns.

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Bleak future for Crawley a year after first Covid lockdown

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The town in the shadow of Gatwick airport hopes the worst of the pandemic is over but fears for its jobs

The differences with the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic are stark in Crawley. Plenty of people are milling around Queens Square in the town centre, enjoying the early spring sun, even though most of the shops remain closed; some permanently.

In the West Sussex town close to Gatwick airport, hopes are rising that the worst days of the pandemic have finally passed. But with global air travel still grounded, workers in Crawley fear there will be long-term damage for the local jobs market.

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I spent lockdown on a Portuguese island

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Armona, off the Algarve, has been home since Covid’s second wave – and I’ve grown to love its beauty, simplicity and kindness

The sun is slowly rising over the Atlantic and I sit watching from the house I have rented overlooking dunes on the small Portuguese island of Armona. The sound of fishing boats heading out marks the pre-dawn, a time known as the blue hour, now a time when many are awake, having thrashed the bedding during another fretful pandemic night. I try to meditate and do breathing exercises to settle myself down. “It will be all right,” I say. And the sun says it back.

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Overseas holiday destinations ‘to be ranked using traffic light system’

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Countries to be graded green, amber or red based on Covid rates and vaccination rollouts, reports say

Foreign holiday destinations will be ranked under a traffic light system, with fewer restrictions tied to the places boasting the lowest coronavirus rates and high vaccination take-up, it has been reported.

Countries will be graded either green, amber or red, according to how well they are coping with the pandemic, it was claimed.

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Nappy nomads: the couples who do #vanlife with babies on board

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As the vanlife community grows up, a new generation is being born into the bohemian travelling lifestyle. Doosie Morris meets the couples who take their lives, and babies, on the road

In October 2020, 34-year-old Karstan Smith had just returned from a 15,000km drive. Four months earlier the Newcastle native had set off in a 1968 Kombi panel van with his childhood sweetheart, Maxine, and their baby daughter, Zuri, and headed north. Within a week of being home, he’d thrown out 90% of his clothes, purchased a map of Australia and a box of thumbtacks and started planning the next family adventure.

For most parents the first year of family life is a wild enough ride in its own right, the very steepest of learning curves, never mind enduring the whole discombobulating scenario while living in the back of a van.

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Tourists in Greece and Spain but most of Covid-hit Europe plans Easter at home

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Several thousand Germans head to Crete and Balearic islands as pandemic third wave spreads across EU

The first foreign tourists may have landed in locked-down Spain and Greece, but as a third wave of the pandemic accelerates across the EU, few Europeans will be enjoying an Easter break abroad – or even away from home.

German holidaymakers began arriving on Crete on Monday, with six half-empty flights landing at Heraklion airport after the tourist minister, Haris Theoharis, said some visitors could be permitted before the country’s planned reopening on 14 May.

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Wheel life with the ladies in the van

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Many middle-aged American women are selling up and shipping out, taking to the roads alone in their mobile homes

Sarah Gabriel found her life’s meaning in a small town in Kansas on a cold autumn morning in 2020. It was the hour before dawn in a Walmart car park and the 63-year-old rolled back the strip of floor underlay that serves as makeshift curtains on the windows of her 2008 Honda minivan to the awesome sight of a full moon looming above the spectral white of Walmart’s security lights.

“Here I was in Kansas, you know, like Dorothy, and the moon was doing her thing like I was doing my thing,” she recalls. “‘Hey Sarah,’ she seemed to say, ‘you’re in your seventh decade and now it’s time for your big adventure.’”

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UK government in talks over expanding Covid travel ‘red list’

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Ministers under growing pressure to prevent variants undermining vaccine programme

Discussions are under way in Whitehall about expanding the travel “red list” of countries as ministers face mounting pressure to prevent coronavirus variants undermining the vaccine programme.

The Guardian understands that officials met on Friday to consider the case for taking a tougher approach. British residents and nationals returning from countries on the red list must quarantine in an airport hotel for 10 days at a cost of £1,750, while other arrivals are banned. It remains illegal to go on holiday.

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