Travel ban: One year on, here are the best trips we had to cancel

Twelve months after international travel was first banned in the UK, The Independent’s Travel team reminisces about what might have been…

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On 17 March 2020, the unprecedented order was given – the UK government advised against all non-essential international travel. The coronavirus pandemic put an end to holidays abroad, marking the start of one of the most challenging years for the global tourism industry in living memory.

Twelve months on and not much has changed. After a summer of tentative possibility, during which the reopening of some European borders and the introduction of quarantine-free travel corridors made trips possible, the UK is now back in lockdown, with a total ban on all leisure travel to match.

Domestic holidays won’t be possible till 12 April at the earliest in England; foreign holidays are illegal until at least 17 May. But as the vaccine rollout continues at a pace and an increasing number of destinations announce spring and summer dates for welcoming back tourists, perhaps 2021 will be the year we make up for lost time.

Until then, here are The Independent Travel team’s list of the best trips that never were from 2020.

Cargo ship to America

After pledging to give up flying for the year in 2020, I decided I was going to take just one crazy long-haul journey by boat. But not just any boat; this was going to be a month-long round trip by cargo ship. No luxury cruise, this kind of travel is very much back to basics (and requires an incredibly flexible attitude, with dates liable to shift last minute). Boarding at Liverpool, I would spend the next nine days or so at sea, crossing the Atlantic to reach Nova Scotia in Canada. The vessel would move south along the North American coast, calling at New York and Baltimore, before heading back. This epic sailing was originally scheduled for August 2020, then shifted to March 2021, now delayed until… well, who knows. The US is very much off limits to British travellers at present. I’m still hopeful I’ll get to ride on a cargo ship some day, but I’m not holding my breath. Helen Coffey

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Pilgrimage across France

I’ve always fancied a crack at a proper pilgrimage – walking miles by day with nothing but my thoughts and the views for company, eating a hearty meal in the evening and collapsing into bed each night to do it all over again. I had originally planned an April 2020 trip to France, hiking from Laon to Reims over the course of four days to complete part of the Via Francigena, an ancient road and pilgrim route running from France to Rome and Apulia. Obviously that was off the table; it was rearranged for September, before being cancelled again. This year, I’m going to have another try – but after such a long wait, this time I’m going to raise the bar and go for a section of the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. HC

Overnight ferry to Amsterdam

A general view of the canal houses or grachtenpand in Dutch and flower market on Singel on May 11, 2016 in Amsterdam, Netherlands (Getty Images)

There were a golden few weeks when my planned weekend in Amsterdam – featuring an overnight ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland followed by a train into the Dutch capital – could have taken place over the summer. But I missed the window, and before I knew it the travel corridor to the Netherlands was axed and restrictions reimposed. But I’m still determined to get my city break in the diary, completing the transport triumvirate – I’ve reached Amsterdam by plane and by train, and I will add boat to that list. HC

Paris and Bordeaux

I had a baby two days after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office banned all international travel, so it’s fair to say my summer holidays weren’t exactly front of mind. (That said, I was still frantically trying to find a good deal on Asia flights while in hospital – once a travel editor, always a travel editor.) We had booked what now seems like a frankly unmanageable trip across France when my son was going to be just a few months’ old: Eurostar to Paris, then staying in hotels I favoured pre-baby (tiny rooms with cool bars in the best part of town); then onto Bordeaux and the wild Atlantic coast for a friend’s wedding. Maybe it’s best we didn’t make that, given at home I could barely manage to brush my hair by that point. Cathy Adams

Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam

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Wanting to maximise the 10 months “off” for maternity leave, I was a hair’s breadth away from booking a three-week jaunt around Asia when all travel was banned – figuring that of course by November, things would be “normal” again. What hubris! The plan was to stay in Hong Kong for a few days, seeing friends, before heading to Vietnam for a few weeks to chill at a beach resort, before flying home to London via Singapore. I’m crossing my fingers it might be able to happen this year. CA

Shu’ab Beach, Socotra Island, Yemen

Last night: the beach at Qalansiyah, Socotra (Vinay Kishore)

On reflection, perhaps it wasn’t the most brilliant idea to head for an Indian Ocean island belonging to a tragically war torn-nation as the world closed down. Simply to reach Socotra had involved, for complicated reasons: a bus across the desert of Saudi Arabia; the finest fixer in the Middle East to bundle me across a frontier that was slamming shut to Aqaba in Jordan; hitchhiking across Israel; a long-distance taxi to Sharm El Sheikh; a domestic flight to Cairo; and a middle-of-the-night departure to Yemen. It all worked, and I spent five magical days at the end of world blissfully unaware of the mayhem my colleagues were dealing with. The trip was supposed to be a week, with Shu’ab Beach as the climax, but in the early hours of day six our merry band of tourists were woken from our campsite slumbers with the news that the last flight out was about to leave. The company, Lupine Travel, organised an impromptu evacuation brilliantly – and no one could wish for a better last trip before lockdown. I can’t wait to return. Simon Calder

Italy and Armenia

Splendid isolation: the Duomo in Florence, July 2020 (Simon Calder)

The good news: British Airways and Ryanair refunded the air fares swiftly and without fuss. The bad news: I shall have to wait for another spring to explore the former Soviet republic of Armenia, and I fear it may not involve a pause in the fine northern Italian city of Bergamo. In January 2020, when we were still writing about “the Wuhan coronavirus” as though it was a far-off concern, I booked a BA trip to Bergamo and an onward hop to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, for barely more than a Netflix subscription. In July 2020, as soon as mandatory UK quarantine was lifted, I found my way to northern Italy (on Ryanair to Trieste), and wandered across this wonderful, wounded country to Venice, Florence and Pisa. And halfway around the magnificent city walls of the latter, the call came through: Spain, our favourite holiday destination, had suddenly been put back on the no-go list. Since then, no-go has become the norm. SC