Do we dare think about travelling again?

When we were first told to stay at home last March, I wasn’t really that bothered. We had recently enjoyed two long holidays in exciting places and I thought that being grounded for a while wasn’t such a bad thing. I was feeling a bit guilty about all those flights and thought that staying in one place for a while would be good for me, providing an opportunity to reflect and appreciate the travelling we had done. That was the plan anyway.

First, I worked industriously on photo books of our most recent holidays in Mexico and Southeast Asia, and then I threw myself into dreaming about the countries we’d visit very soon. I watched virtual tours of natural wonders like the Bolivian salt flats and the sand dunes in Namibia. We avidly followed Race Across the World, the TV programme that challenged five teams of two people to travel from Mexico City to Ushuaia on a limited budget and without mobile phones. We had no doubt that pretty soon we’d be travelling to exciting places too. We even booked a trip to Japan and Malaysia for March 2021 – surely all this pandemic stuff would be over by then?

But then lockdown fatigue started to set in. This coronavirus thing just didn’t seem to be going away (even though our prime minister vowed to “send it packing”) and I couldn’t face thinking about travel at all. Even in Britain. I did try, but although our country is full of great natural beauty, somehow the thought of travelling around when so much was closed just didn’t appeal. Natural beauty is all very well, but it’s even better when there’s a pub open around the corner. And how can it really be called a holiday when there’s no opportunity to waste time in coffee shops?

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Then our professional travellers started popping up in various places across the country – was that really Simon Reeve in Cornwall? Surely we last saw him in Belize, witnessing a gun battle between park rangers and ruthless gang members intent on destroying the rain forest? As you’d expect from Simon Reeve, his programmes on Cornwall were excellent, revealing the darker, more problematic side of that beautiful county. But still, Cornwall? It just seemed wrong. Like David Attenborough filming a wildlife documentary in Swindon.

This year, however, I can feel my travel optimism starting to return. Much of our vulnerable population has been vaccinated and the current lockdown is thankfully bringing the rates of infection down. There are great hopes for the vaccine rollout across the world and the promise of travel is in the air. I’m cautiously opening myself up to the idea that we might travel again. I’ve started by watching classic Michael Palin travelogues and will pretty soon gear myself up to reading Monisha Rajesh’s Around the World in 80 Trains. Our Japan/Malaysia trip has been cancelled this year, but we’ve re-booked it for next March.

I’ve reflected and appreciated the travel I’ve done for long enough and, beautiful though Britain is, I can’t wait to leave it. And I bet you won’t see Simon Reeve touring Dorset next year either.