Going on holiday in a pandemic: what it’s really like

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We’ve just got back from France, and are now in two weeks quarantine, which was announced three days before we were due to come home. We knew this would be a risk and we took it, because my husband can work from home and I would only lose one day of work if that. I thought I’d write about how it was for us, why we chose to go and the whole experience.

Why book a holiday in a pandemic?

Well we didn’t book it during the pandemic, it was booked last year before any of this happened. When covid-19 all started, I was ever the optimist and thought it would all blow over. My husband not so much and he said summer would be cancelled. As time went on I began to agree with him and prepared myself for the worst. We booked with Eurocamp, which was protected, so if we had to cancel or they had to cancel we could get a refund credit note.

I also bought travel insurance when there were whispers about travel restrictions early on in March. This turned out to be a godsend, as it was quite cheap and covered a lot of eventualities. It was through cedar tree, I’d highly recommend them. They sent us an email saying we were covered if our holiday was cancelled, or if we got ill with Covid before we left, and if we became ill with it whilst on holiday, our health costs would be covered.

I was avidly watching the Eurocamp website and their Covid updates. Once they opened travel corridors to include France we were good to go. Part of me just wanted to defer until next year. We had a small window of time where we still could have done that, and re-booked for next year or taken a refund once it got to March 2021. We decided to go, thinking we deserved a break and we’d been telling the kids about the holiday before and didn’t want to disappoint them.

When the quarantine from Spain was announced, I felt bad for the travellers, but it’s part of the risk you take. I naively didn’t think it would happen in France!

Travelling via Eurotunnel

We had already booked our Eurotunnel tickets and planned to drive down. We could have got a ferry to St. Malo, but it’s three times the price! Once you get to the Eurotunnel terminal, it’s very easy. It wasn’t crowded at all, and our car was scanned, no need to show tickets or even see a human being until passport control. That’s the way I liked it. We even got on an earlier crossing. That part all went very smoothly.

We found the campsite a little tricky to find, we were staying in Les Ormes at Domaines des Ormes in Brittany. In the Satnav it had Eurocamp but when we pulled in it said Les Ormes and looked like a horse riding centre. It then took us some back way and we found ourselves on a farm track! I called the rep and it turned out it was the Les Ormes place we had first gone to. Once there, check in was smooth and we were soon in our air conditioned chalet.

The holiday itself was better than I expected from a Coronavirus point of view. From the Eurocamp website, they had said that pool numbers would be restricted and we would need to wear masks at the pubs and restaurants. It turns out they didn’t restrict numbers at the indoor or outdoor pool, but social distancing was recommended. None of the activities were restricted (or it didn’t seem that way), but masks were required for the safety briefings and when entering the indoor pool.

We couldn’t change at the indoor pool, the toilets were open but no lockers – you had to arrive and leave in your costume and leave bags by the pool side. It was a minor inconvenience but not a big issue. You needed to wear your mask inside the grocery shop and when ordering a takeaway or at the bar, or when arriving at a restaurant, but once seated you could take it off. They said the campsite was running at about 50% capacity, which was good for us, because we could do most of the activities when we wanted and pretty much always got a sunbed at the outdoor pool.

As for social distancing, people were doing it, but the rules in France say 1 metre distancing rather than 2. I think a lot of the time it wasn’t always that, and it did feel weird to be in crowds again. I think people were trying not to physically touch each other though. Travelling on the way down we stopped at a large service station and it felt very strange to have so many people milling about when over here it’s pretty much one in one out!

On the Thursday during our holiday we heard the news about the quarantine law. It was not a surprise, my husband had been tracking their rates and knew it was coming. We were prepared. We weren’t going to change our plans. The journey home was reasonably straightforward, we decided to shop at the big supermarket just before the Eurotunnel, but then got confused getting out and missed our scheduled time to cross – it didn’t matter, we just got on a later one instead.

Once home, 2 days later my eldest got a sore throat and a cough! Of course, this worried us, he had no fever and then got a blocked nose. We ordered Covid test kits to be posted to us and swabbed 4 of us on the Saturday. We returned on the Monday before. It took 4 days to get the results, probably because we tested at the weekend. We were all negative, which was a relief.

My thoughts on the government response to overseas travel

I was always a bit blase about travel unless the rates were sky high where you were travelling too. If it was similar to here, it seemed sensible to go. Now, I’m not so sure. I feel like the government here and abroad wanted to keep the money flowing and retain jobs so they agreed on travel corridors. Then revoking the corridors at will and imposing quarantine then made it worse for people. I think they should have done the safest thing and ban all but essential travel until it was 100% safe to do so, then everyone would know where they stood.

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