British summer time? For now, winter intensifies

The Man Who Pays His Way: The long coronavirus winter is getting crueller by the day

Which way now? A railway junction in Cuba (Simon Calder)

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for ‘The Independent’ since 1994. In his weekly column, he comments on the most important travel issues of the week – and what they mean for you.

Summer begins this weekend, at least in the opinion of chronology and aviation. When the clocks go forward, the airlines traditionally bring in their summer schedules. Normally I look forward to a blossoming network of new and exotic destinations. But instead, from Monday our sense of isolation will intensify.

From 29 March, daring to turn up at Gatwick or Manchester airport in the hope of going on holiday makes you liable for a £5,000 fine fixed penalty, while anyone arriving from abroad who fibs on their passenger locator form faces up to 10 years in prison.

Quite right, too, many people will say. Air travel started this pandemic. A coronavirus outbreak in central China mutated into a global catastrophe because travellers unwittingly transported the virus to almost all corners of the world at just below the speed of sound. And even though the NHS vaccine programme has proved dazzlingly successful, the European Union has made a shambles of getting jabs into arms.

The more cases there are, the higher the chance that vaccine-resistant variants will appear. So epidemiologists have been forming a social distanced queue to urge against overseas holidays this summer.

Read more:

• Travel industry fury at ‘coordinated campaign’ to undermine holidays
• How the ‘traffic light travel’ system could work 
• Summer holidays would bring ‘real risk’ of Covid variants, says scientist 
• When can we travel again? Key lockdown easing dates

They have the best of intentions: to minimise the human devastation caused by Covid-19. But as they will acknowledge, there is more to life than bearing down on a vile virus.

Top of many people’s lists is to reconnect with loved ones abroad who they have not hugged for a year or more. Others will be desperate for international travel to resume so they have a hope of hanging onto their jobs when the furlough scheme unravels. And the rest of us simply want to reclaim the sweet anticipation of an adventure or a beach.

Yet a procession of ministers over the past week has dampened hopes of an escape, urging us to suppress any aspiration to travel abroad.

On Tuesday, The Times chose to pour fuel on heightened emotions with a front-page headline reading “Overseas travel ban extended until July”. It was a surprising choice of words, given that the overseas travel ban has not been extended and is still expected to end on 17 May, as the government’s roadmap indicates.

Words have consequences. Shortly afterwards, someone messaged me to say: “I want to fly to Spain to see my 90-year-old mother, sister and niece.

“We speak every day but with no hope of a visit our spirits are very low. I feel desperate, and to be honest, frightened by this enforced separation from my family.”

Prominent epidemiologists do what they are perfectly entitled to do: to explain their fears about how Covid-19 could evolve, and lobby for travel restrictions to remain in place to limit the risk to the UK population.

The travel industry, conversely, is impatient to open up the world. Benjamin Smith, chief executive of Air France/KLM, insists “we’d like the soonest restart possible” and that “quarantine should be a measure of last resort”.

You might expect a government that brought us a hard Brexit to elect to build more barriers, which explains the £5,000 fines and 10-year jail terms for holidaymakers. Yet the idea that everywhere foreign represents a threat has been seized upon equally enthusiastically by opposition politicians.

Sense will surely prevail eventually, in the shape of a nuanced approach that opens up travel to countries and regions that pose little threat. For now, the long coronavirus winter is getting crueller by the day.