Travel after the pandemic could see us paying more for long-haul flights. Good

The Man Who Pays His Way: The end of the summer, but not the end of travel

Short haul: a signpost in Millport, Great Cumbrae (Simon Calder)

Who said this? “Horizons are wider, and exploring this lovely planet is safer, than ever in human history. These are the best of times for the traveller. Make all you can of the 2020s.”

I did, in a tweet on New Year’s Day.

Well that went well. Anyone with the misfortune to take up what was meant to be well-intentioned advice with a late-August adventure to Switzerland or the Czech Republic is possibly right now cursing me, as they scamper to get home ahead of another 4am quarantine deadline.

And who said this? “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal, the brilliant 17th-century French mathematician.

Many of us have spent much of 2020 sitting quietly in a room. I am enjoying an adventure of sorts this August, visiting seven islands around Great Britain in seven days.

The mysterious isles of the Furness Archipelago, gentle Great Cumbrae off the Ayrshire coast and the Seventies vibe of the Isle of Wight felt all the more rewarding after months of incarceration.

This journey through a world of coronavirus has taken me on a succession of socially distanced trains and boats, and to rooms in which I have sat quietly.

In the garret at the top of the Hotel Babylon in Blackpool, and elsewhere, I have tried to process the conflicting senses of joy in the present and trepidation about the future – not least for the millions whose jobs depend on you and I indulgently exploring this fine planet.

The short-term outlook for the travel industry, and travellers, is ghastly. The Thursday evening wheel of quarantine fortune seems to have become a summer fixture.

Lately, I have spent an absurd amount of time ploughing through spreadsheets of Covid-19 infection rates, trying to provide some guidance to people about their imminent travel plans – unsure whether they should board that plane to Portugal, with the spectre of the nation returning to the no-go list only two or three weeks after the government gave it the all-clear.

Yet sitting quietly in a room this Friday afternoon, I feel optimistic.

Some time this autumn, the strictly ludicrous arithmetical approach to where you and I can spend our holidays will surely end.

What’s left of the travel industry can then pick itself up and set about trying once more to satisfy the human hunger for exploration.

Over the past few months, many travel industry people have said that they expect things to rebound in two or three or four years. But it is not a case of switching the industry of human happiness off and then on again, and expecting travel to reboot just as it was.

After the ultimate crash diet, our appetites for travel will take time to restore – and our desires will be better aligned with the future of the planet.

We will think more deeply about what we want from travel, whether in Blackpool or beyond, rather than merely exploiting a cheap deal for a frivolous, fast-forgotten weekend. Our horizons will be more measured.

In future, I hope I will not need to persuade British travellers that there are many better, nearer places to be in August than Mexico or Dubai or Thailand.

“It is not good to be too free,” was another of Pascal’s pensees. “It is not good to have everything one wants.”

Trim your sails.

With a collapse in business travel – which has bankrolled those of us in the cheap seats on intercontinental flights for decades – the indulgence offered by long-haul travel for decades will be priced more in line with the cost to the environment.

For the privilege of leaving your room for the far side of the world, you will pay more and have less choice. And, I hope, appreciate the opportunity far more deeply.

Meanwhile, to see you through, summon up your most blissful travel memory. To complete the Pascal trilogy: “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.”