Afaranwide

Expats, Travellers, Tourists

NEWSLETTER 65: SEPTEMBER 2021

By Colin Simpson and Sue Brattle

Thank you for your interest in the Afaranwide travel blog.

Returning home is a challenge

Dampening Expectations

AFTER almost 15 years of working and travelling abroad, we’ve come home to the UK. We’ve decided not to write about it at any length yet – because we frankly don’t know what we think! We always knew it would be a challenge. Every expat guide warns about this moment and friends who have returned ahead of us have proved that it’s never easy. Our homecoming had an unexpected layer of difficulty, which we’ll describe another time. On the surface, England is wet, cold, very expensive and feels very foreign. With time to reflect, I’m sure we’ll reach some surprising conclusions – just as every step of our 15-year adventure threw surprises at us. One thing worth mentioning is how little Covid gets mentioned here. Not many people wear masks, no one seems to talk about it, yet we’re now living among the highest infection and death rates we’ve experienced. As I said, everything feels foreign. – SB

…but not if you’ve come from Ireland. Sign at a UK airport

Covid Travel Loophole

WE SAT out the pandemic for ten months in Portugal, where we received the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine. When the time came for us to return home to the UK we were incensed to learn that, though we were fully vaccinated with a jab officially approved in Britain, we would still have to self-isolate and pay for multiple expensive PCR tests in the UK. Trying to figure out a way around this, we chanced upon something called the Common Travel Area (CTA). This is an arrangement dating back to 1922 that lets Irish and British citizens travel freely between the two countries, as well as granting social welfare, healthcare and voting rights. We realised that if we went home via Ireland we could avoid self-isolation and the tests normally required by Britain. We would not even have to fill in the UK locator form demanded from travellers arriving from every other country in the world. So we spent 10 days at a hotel in Dublin, and then headed out to the city’s airport to fly home. While waiting to board in the food area we marvelled at the ability of locals in their late teens and early twenties to down trayfuls of cocktails and pints of Guinness at 7.15 a.m. Sure enough, after landing at London Stansted we passed freely through immigration and did not, thanks to the CTA, even have to show our passports. The rules say you must have spent the previous 10 days within the area, which consists of the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. In fact, no one checked this, so we could probably have flown into Dublin and on to London on the same day. We are fully in favour of free, unrestricted travel, and the CTA clearly benefited us. But it does seem a bit of an anomaly amid the bewilderingly complex and ever-changing Covid travel restrictions imposed by the UK.

Entrance to the brewery

Guinness Storehouse – Worth a Visit?

THE Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is Ireland's most popular tourist attraction with (before Covid) 1.7 million visitors a year – but is it all it's cracked up to be?

Not a hair out of place. Engin Akyurt/Unsplash

Chatting In a Salon

IT WAS my luck that while I was having a pedicure in a Dublin beauty salon a bridal party turned up. The bride was two days away from her wedding and she and her bridesmaids seemed very subdued. But once we were all asked about their choice of nail polish for the Big Day, chatter broke out – and the salon owner broke out the bubbly for everyone. “What’s your priest like?” someone asked the bride. “He’s refused almost every piece of music we chose for the service,” she answered. “And his pre-wedding marriage chat was a bit... boring.” It’s 2021 and celibate men are still “preparing” young couples for marriage? But you’ve got to love Dublin, where a quickie pedi turned into two hours of pure gold. I’m always surprised by the conversations you have with complete strangers in the relaxed atmosphere of a salon. – SB

Lady Grange, by Sir John Baptiste de Medina. Private Collection on long-term loan to the National Galleries of Scotland

The Prisoner of St Kilda

LAST week saw the 91st anniversary of the evacuation of the remaining islanders on St Kilda, a wild and stormy archipelago 66 kilometres off the northeast coast of Scotland. They had asked to be moved to the mainland after becoming worn down by fierce Atlantic storms, disease brought in by gawping tourists, and the general harshness and frugality of their lives. I have long been intrigued by the story of St Kilda and its people, and was fascinated to visit the islands. While there I came across the story of Lady Grange, a murderer’s daughter born in 1679 whose 25-year marriage produced nine children but ended in acrimonious separation. She was kidnapped in 1732 on the orders of her husband after finding one of his letters that she claimed was evidence of treason. She was held captive in various remote locations, including St Kilda, for the remaining 13 years of her life.

Colin explores St Kilda

The primitive stone hut that is thought by some to have been her home on Hirta, the main St Kilda island, stands away from the main village towards the shore. She had a miserable time there, and described Hirta as a “vile, nasty, stinking poor isle”. Lady Grange’s remarkable story is told in a book called The Prisoner of St Kilda: The True Story of the Unfortunate Lady Grange, by Margaret Macaulay. I was interested to see on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that the St Kilda Club is following the route through Scotland taken by Lady Grange and her kidnappers. A recent stop-off was at Castle Tioram in the western Highlands. There she is said to have broken her arm while trying to escape through a secret passage. It’s no more than you would expect from the redoubtable Lady G, who once threatened to run naked through the streets of Edinburgh after learning that her husband was having an affair. – CS

Airbnb apartment. InstagramFOTOGRAFIN/Pixabay

Fishy Stay With Airbnb

OUR first experience of Airbnb some years ago was not great. We booked a room in a bungalow in San Diego, California, that turned out to be way out of town. The host was friendly enough, but we were not impressed when two other travellers who turned up on spec were given a better room than us, even though we’d booked weeks ahead. We were kept awake by a noisy pump outside our room that aerated a barrel containing live fish. One night I switched this off, which nearly resulted in the death of the fish. Fast forward, and Airbnb has become a much more slick and reliable proposition. After returning home to the UK we booked an apartment through the platform and were highly impressed by the whole experience. The website is easy to use, and we’ve ended up in a very nice, modern flat with no barrels of fish in the vicinity. Our only quibble concerns the cancellation terms, which could be more flexible given the continuing impact of Covid on many people’s travel plans. After years of avoiding Airbnb, we’ve finally become converts.

The final countdown

Is the World Ready for Expo?

EXPO 2020 DUBAI is due to open in less than a month from now, on October 1. Organisers say 191 countries are taking part in the world fair – but is the world bothered? There has been little global media coverage in the past few weeks as the opening ceremony approaches. A Google news search for the term “Expo 2020 Dubai” showed that 80 percent of the recent coverage was from media in Dubai and the surrounding region. The remaining 20 percent was mainly from little-known outlets in a handful of countries, with some rerunning stories that had appeared in the Dubai papers. Major titles such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, and the UK’s Times and Guardian were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, with Covid still lingering, the world is just not in the mood for a glitzy Dubai-style party. In a further development, Emirates airline has announced that every passenger it takes to Dubai will receive free entry to Expo. This hardly suggests there’s a frenzied rush to buy tickets. Emirates is by far the biggest carrier in Dubai, accounting for more than 50 per cent of passenger arrivals. So at a stroke potential Expo ticket revenue from over half of all overseas visitors will be lost.

We’d love to hear from you – get in touch:

If this email was forwarded to you, subscribe for free: