Will we get the green light for our Greek adventure?

Q Can you please give me advice on my planned trip to Thassos, in regard to the proposed traffic light system? It is one of the many smaller islands Brits travel to, but could be complicated if the mainland is in a different colour zone to the islands.

To get to Thassos we fly to Thessaloniki, pick up a rental car, drive to Keramoti port and then have a 40-minute ferry ride. Suppose the mainland was amber (meaning quarantine) but the island was green (no quarantine). We would not be stopping anywhere but we are worried about how this could affect our position on our return to the UK.

Alison L

A Like you, I am very fond of Thassos. This northeastern Greek island is untypical: a volcanic relic, much more verdant and vertical than most other isles. But it has the requisite virtues of archaeology, beaches and simple tavernas serving superb fresh food.

While Thassos has no airport, getting there used to be easy, with Thomas Cook flying from a range of UK airports to Kavala, close to Keramoti. After the collapse of the company, there is no sign of an imminent replacement. Thessaloniki is almost 100 miles further from the port.

To get to your central point: the quarantine rules when you return to the UK are determined as the harshest that apply to anywhere you have spent any time within the past 10 days. A good example is changing planes in the transit area of a “red list” airport such as Dubai or Doha: spending an hour in either airport on your way to Heathrow triggers 11 nights of hotel quarantine at the traveller’s huge expense.

Suppose Thassos is on the green list, but Thessaloniki is not. Since you have no choice but to pass through the mainland en route to the airport and the flight home, you would need to go into self-isolation on your return.

Three observations. First, the only circumstances in which this draconian rule does not apply is if you are in a car driving to the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais; you can pass through France without mingling with other people (this is relevant only if Belgium or other nearby countries are green).

Second, this is a very different policy to that employed by locations such as Germany and the island of Jersey, where they allow reasonably brief transit activities.

Third, last time I looked, Thassos had some of the highest infection rates in Europe. But as we have discovered, islands are prone to very swift movements in coronavirus numbers, and by summer I expect there will be a very different picture.

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Q I believe you stated that anybody who owns a property and wishes to sell, rent or repair can go to the US. A UK government document “Travel abroad: Step-by-step” states the same. We got to the airport and were turned away as we didn’t have US approval.

John G

A First, I am really sorry you had the awful experience of being turned away at the airport. It’s stressful and upsetting whatever the cause, and I imagine in your case also expensive, unless the airline allowed you to carry the booking forward in the form of a voucher for future travel.

I don’t believe I have ever said “anybody who owns a property and wishes to sell, rent or repair can go to the US”. I have said, repeatedly, that the government’s current strict ban on leaving the UK to go abroad does not apply to someone travelling overseas “to carry out activities related to buying, selling, letting or renting a residential property”. This is unkindly referred to as the “Stanley Johnson exemption”, because in July 2020 the prime minister’s father travelled out “on essential business” even though England was still in lockdown. His excuse was that he needed to render a property he rents out in the Pelion region “Covid-secure” before the holiday season started.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some people may be exploiting the wide-open property exemption to go on holiday abroad. You are clearly not in this category. Regrettably, though, having permission to leave the UK is only part of the puzzle. The next essential is being allowed into the destination country.

The US has extremely strict rules on non-Americans arriving from the UK (and the rest of Europe). As I mentioned a couple of days ago, a presidential proclamation has banned us since March 2020. The only way around the rule is to go somewhere like Mexico, from which travel to the US is not so heavily restricted, and spend 14 days there.

There is a small chance that you may be able to get recompense if you booked your flight through an agent who failed to point out the US rules and to ascertain that you could get around them.

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Q I have a business meeting in The Hague in September. Assuming travel to the Netherlands is possible by then, will it be safer/easier to go by train or air from London?

James N

A How lovely to contemplate a trip to that fine Dutch city, which is much overlooked in favour of Amsterdam. By September I am sure the current travel restrictions will be much reduced and simplified. In terms of risk: I believe the measures taken on all forms of transport sharply reduce any danger. So it is a question of the best means of transport, I think.

Since you are starting from London, the ideal way to reach The Hague is neither train nor air – it involves the overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland, with rail and bus connections. There’s a Boat Train from London Liverpool Street at 7.32pm, with the ship sailing at 11pm. It arrives at the Dutch port at 8am. A local bus, number 31, runs from Hook of Holland to the centre of The Hague, taking 39 minutes – so you should make a morning meeting, even if it starts at 9am.

Coming back, you might prefer to switch to the afternoon Eurostar train. While the express through the Channel Tunnel does not serve The Hague directly, it goes very close – to Rotterdam Centraal, which you can reach from Den Haag Centraal in just 25 minutes.

Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic began, Eurostar put arrangements in place for security and immigration clearance in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where the train terminates/starts. So allow half-an-hour for formalities before the three-and-a-half-hour journey to central London via Brussels.

At times, airfares between London and Amsterdam (the closest big airport to The Hague) have been significantly cheaper than rail, but right now I am looking at lots of £48 one-way rail tickets from Rotterdam to London if you book well in advance.

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Q Do you think we’ll see the UAE removed from the “red list” and added to the green or amber list?

John N

A The United Arab Emirates was added to the UK government’s red list of countries from which arriving travellers must go into hotel quarantine on 29 January. At the time, the Department for Transport (DfT) said the decision was made following “the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, first identified in South Africa, that may have spread to other countries including the UAE”.

Since then, the nation has been running one of the most comprehensive and effective vaccination programmes in the world. There has been no significant outbreak of Covid related to the South African variant. So why is the UAE still on the list?

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, explained that it is all down to the fact that Dubai and (to a lesser extent) Abu Dhabi are global hubs for aviation.

He told a ConservativeHome online event that that UK health officials simply could not tell where arrivals were coming from.

“We are not restricting UAE because of levels of coronavirus in the UAE,” he said. “The specific issue in the UAE is one of transit. It’s because they are a major transit hub.

“The Joint Biosecurity Centre can work wonders studying all this detail, but eventually you get to the point where they are having to make too many assumptions about where people are travelling to/from. And that is a specific issue we have with the UAE as opposed to prevalence or some other reason.”

Mr Shapps is the minister who decides which countries are on the red list, and consequently, it is very difficult to see the UAE being removed from the hotel quarantine category any time soon. The conditions that led to its appearance on the red list – ie a large number of passengers converging from countries across the globe – will continue to prevail for months and years.

Indeed, other countries may fear being added to the list because of their hub status; Turkey and Singapore could be candidates.

The UK government cannot change its view without an embarrassing U-turn that would raise serious questions about the overall competence of the risk assessment system.

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