Should I cancel my Portugal trip after virus cases surge?

Q We have a holiday booked for Portugal tomorrow. We can see the coronavirus case numbers are rising and understand Portugal is likely to be put back on the list. We will lose our jobs if we have to self-isolate for two weeks, so will have to cancel.

Do we have any options regarding using our travel insurance to claim part of our money back?

Lisa B

A Please don’t be hasty. Portugal was finally deemed acceptably low-risk by the UK government on Saturday 22 August.

Immediately, many thousands of British travellers, including me, booked trips there. Since then, the number of new coronavirus cases in Portugal has sadly seen a sharp and sustained rise.

Were the present trend to continue, and the British government to continue with its current criteria and practice for imposing quarantine, Portugal would be put back on the “no-go” list this coming Thursday, with the now-standard 4am deadline on Saturday 5 September to get back without triggering the need to self-isolate at home for two weeks.

But I have a hunch that it may not happen.

Sources in Portugal say that the government there organised a surge of testing in care homes which resulted in 500 cases of coronavirus identified during last week. That could help to explain why on both Friday and Saturday there were around 400 newly identified cases in Portugal as a whole, the highest daily figures since early July. If the report is correct, then we can expect figures for new cases to flatten and start slowly to decline as the “testing effect” works through.

Even if the numbers continue to rise – and Portugal needs only a 10 per cent to tip it over the edge – the UK government may not act to make the whole country a no-go destination once more.

While Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, has warned that no one should book a foreign holiday if they are not prepared to self-isolate for two weeks on their return, I sense that the government may show some leniency to Portugal. For example, if the rising numbers are solely the temporary result of much-increased testing, that may be taken into account.

I am sorry to say that if you choose to cancel at this stage there will be little chance of recompense from any source. Insurance will not pay out on what might happen. The airline or holiday company will not offer a refund for events that are merely possible.

My suggestion is: keep an eye on the rates, and if the numbers get worse over the next two days then buy seats on the Thursday evening flight from Faro to Stansted on Ryanair – currently at £137 per person, though they may increase before departure. Not ideal, but better than abandoning your holiday.

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Q We’re in Portugal now and worried that it will lose its quarantine exemption this weekend on the usual “4am Saturday morning” deadline. Lots of other people seem to be, too, as the airfares for Friday 4 September seem to have gone through the roof, with Ryanair wanting £270 one-way from Lisbon to Manchester and that’s before any luggage.

I think I can see a work-around, though. If we flew from Lisbon on Friday to Dublin, for which Ryanair wants only £27, and flew from Dublin to Liverpool on Saturday (only £20), would that mean we miss the quarantine?

Lee B

A The prospect that Portugal may join the “no-go” list after just two weeks is certainly driving a lot of concern. Looking at the new infection numbers released on Monday, it seems to me that only a near-miraculous reduction between now and Thursday will keep its rate below 20 per 100,000 residents – the bar that the Department for Transport has set for triggering quarantine. Yesterday there were 320 new infections; I calculate it would need to dip below 100 for three days running to get clear.

Having said that, as I mentioned above the UK government may come up with various reasons why re-imposing the quarantine requirement on arrivals from Portugal could be kept on hold. You can be sure that diplomatic pressure is being applied from Lisbon, explaining that the high numbers over the past few days are solely a temporary result of much-increased testing.

Let’s assume, though, that Portugal is added to the no-go list, with the now-standard Thursday evening Foreign Office warning against travel and arriving passengers required to self-isolate for a fortnight from 4am on Saturday.

I am afraid that the deadline you have to meet is being back in the UK, not merely out of Portugal. But that is perfectly feasible with the 10am Ryanair flight from Lisbon, due to arrive in Dublin at 12.50pm.

You escape Irish quarantine by being in transit to another country. While there is a Ryanair flight an hour after you arrive, the price of £267 is even more of a deterrent than the limited transfer time. But you can head for Dublin Port, not far from the airport, and comfortably board the 2.50pm Stena Estrid for Holyhead. It takes three-and-a-half hours, costs £32.50 and offers rail connections to destinations across northwest England.

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Q We’ve just been to the cinema for the first time in months to see Tenet. It had a load of fascinating locations, and we wondered how many are accessible right now from the UK?

Megan D

A Christopher Nolan’s new action movie, featuring John David Washington and a preposterous time-travel plot, begins in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. From there, filmgoers are taken on a pan-European journey with a venture into India.

The most alluring location is Ravello, on the Amalfi coast of Italy – where a mountain range reaches a sudden halt at the edge of the Mediterranean. Cliff-top villages hover above the spectacular highway that swerves beside the sea. You can reach it easily by air to Naples, followed by a train to Salerno or Sorrento and a bus from there.

The giant wind farm off the Danish coast is best viewed from the ferry between Puttgarten in Germany and Rodbyhavn in Denmark – sadly no longer carrying the Hamburg-Copenhagen intercity train, but departing every 40 minutes in either direction across a corner of the Baltic.

Further east along the same sea, Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, was heavily disrupted during the shooting of a motorway car-and-truck chase through the suburbs. The historic core of the city, briefly glimpsed in Tenet, is the main attraction for tourists – but quarantine rules put it off-limits to British visitors who are unprepared to tolerate two weeks in self-isolation

Similarly, Oslo and the Norwegian Atlantic coast require a 10-day quarantine for travellers from the UK.

The “Oslo airport” sequence, involving an actual Boeing 747, was filmed in Victorville in California – the “aircraft graveyard” where surplus Jumbo jets (of which there are many) are laid to rest. The closing battle scenes, ostensibly in a secret Siberian “closed city”, were also shot in California, outside Palm Springs. But the entire United States is currently off limits to visitors from the UK, according to a presidential proclamation issued almost six months ago.

India is even more inaccessible, due to a near-total ban on international flights. When the country finally opens, the Gate of India in Mumbai and the nearby Cafe Mondegar are well worth visiting.

Which leaves London, open to visitors from elsewhere in the UK without restriction. The main location: Cannon Hall in Hampstead, a handsome 18th-century mansion that doubles as a school in Tenet.

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