Has summer passed the point of no return?

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.

How is your tapestry of holiday memories, that essential element of travel? Threadbare, I imagine. At the start of what would normally be the busiest weekend of the year for travellers, with millions of families flying to the Mediterranean, you may struggle to recall a time when it was possible to visit France, Greece, Italy or Spain without undergoing tests or quarantine either outbound or inbound.

Let me help you. It was exactly a year ago. Yes, well before any Covid vaccines became available, you and I could travel between the UK and the Med with no hassle beyond filling in a form in either direction. This weekend in July 2020, I wandered from the Tuscan hills to Siena and onward to Pisa – where the Campo dei Miracoli was miraculously uncrowded and all the more entrancing for it.

This July, soaring infection rates in the UK have led Italy to impose five days of quarantine on British travellers. That obligation may end on 30 July. But the requirement for Brits to spend £100 or more on tests to return from a country with one-14th of our Covid cases will remain – as will the risk that the UK’s rules will suddenly change in unpredictable and inexplicable ways.

Last weekend I was planning to be in Normandy. So attuned am I to ministers’ ability to dream up new and exotic ways to disrupt the travel plans of British citizens, nothing was booked. I would take the train to Newhaven in East Sussex, buy a ticket for the DFDS ferry to Dieppe, and then, only when past the point of no return, choose a hotel.

Late on Friday, France was placed in a new, mandatory quarantine category swiftly named “amber plus”. A government spokesperson told me: “The Joint Biosecurity Centre has assessed that France is a high-risk Covid-19 destination due to the circulation of variants of concern, most notably the Beta variant, which presents the greatest risk for UK vaccine escape.”

Rubbish, says Robert Boyle, former director of strategy for BA’s parent, IAG, who analyses infection data forensically. “Whatever it was that triggered the government’s decision to create the amber plus list and put France on it, the stated reason of rising Beta cases doesn’t hold up to further inspection,” he says.

This variant is something of a problem on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion – fortunately not, though, in mainland France where the incidence of Beta infections has halved since the first two weeks of June.

Besides throwing the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of people into chaos, the government’s latest incoherent move does something even more damaging: it undermines any remaining confidence among travellers desperate for an escape abroad.

Those of us fortunate to have flexibility to cope with a sudden obligation to quarantine and a healthy credit card limit to absorb unexpected expenses may continue to dream and to plan – but for many, summer has passed the point of no return.