Should you travel to an amber list country this summer? The travel desk argues it out

Up to 270,000 people are due to fly to amber list destinations this week, despite government advice. The Independent’s travel desk argue the pros and cons

Spain will welcome Brits without restriction next week - but it remains on the UK’s ‘amber’ list (Getty Images)

After 19 long weeks, recreational travel became legal again from 17 May under the much-publicised “traffic light” system.

However, holidays seem more stuck on “stop” than “go” this week, as a procession of Whitehall ministers warned against travelling to anywhere that wasn’t on the “green list”.

With only 12 countries banded green, including some South Atlantic territories inhabited with more penguins than people, and most of the world dumped into the amber category (including holiday favourites Spain, France, Italy and Greece), many airlines and holiday firms have started travel to Europe regardless.

Up to 270,000 people are due to fly to “amber” destinations this week, against government guidance, which requires arrivals to self-isolate for 10 days on their return to the UK and take three Covid tests in total.

With the news today that Spain will welcome British holidaymakers from 24 May with no restrictions at all, is travel to an amber country worth it? The Independent’s travel desk argues it out.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent: I can’t face self-isolating

Message to the government: it’s working. I will not travel to an amber list country, because I don’t want to self-isolate when I get home.

I managed to dodge quarantine last summer and I hope to do the same this year. Like most travellers, I regard the requirement to self-isolate as effectively a ban on leisure travel to the vast majority of destinations.

That appears to be exactly what the government has in mind. Since the ban on holidays abroad was lifted, I have been to Portugal, and I have a trip booked to Gibraltar in a couple of weeks’ time. So I am being a dutiful green list traveller – though I appreciate that the health minister, Lord Bethell, regards anyone going beyond the UK as wrong.

Ministers, you must be very proud. You are successfully preventing us from spending our travel budgets for last year as well as this year, which would be hugely to the benefit of UK companies such as British Airways, easyJet Jet2 and Tui. As you excoriate the bold and the desperate who are venturing to amber list nations, though, I think it is fair to pose some questions on behalf of the British public, whether travellers or not.

What are your plans for the million-plus people who formerly made their living from the travel industry? And for filling the gap in public finances created by their impoverishment and consequent inability to pay tax? What about the similar number dependent on inbound tourism – which, as you known, the amber list has successfully destroyed this summer?

Finally, your new-found aversion to risk presumably means more restrictions – starting with young, male drivers who have far more accidents and kill far more people than other motorists. Now that the death rate for Covid is, thankfully, below the daily fatalities on the roads of the UK, that next target is obvious. Isn’t it?

Helen Coffey, deputy head of travel: Why I’m inclined to ignore the government and go amber

“It is very, very clear – you should not be going to an amber list country except for some extreme circumstance, such as the serious illness of a family member. You should not be going to an amber list country on holiday.”

These words were uttered by the prime minister mere days after his government had officially lifted the ban on international leisure travel in England. I couldn’t help but be irked by them. What, pray, is the point of having an amber list at all, if the official line on holidays is identical to the one applied to the red list?

As far as I can tell, this is the government’s way of having its cake and eating it – of being able to deny it is crushing civil liberties like some totalitarian state, while at the same time avoiding culpability by advising people to stay put. Add to all this mind-boggling confusion the onerous restrictions facing travellers when they return to the UK from an amber destination – three Covid tests and a 10-day quarantine to boot – and it’s easy to see why many people are only planning on domestic trips this summer.

A stickler for the rules, I would normally be among them. But something snapped, for me, in the latest chaotic travel announcements; when we were told recreational foreign trips abroad were no longer illegal, but that, hmm, well, we probably still shouldn’t go on them. More flip-flopping after a year of constantly changing goalposts – I’m over it.

Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum

This feeling is compounded by the fact I’ve pledged to go flight-free for the year, a circumstance that essentially means the entire green list is currently off limits to me. But you know what won’t be off limits to me from next week? Lovely, welcoming and, yes, amber Spain. From 24 May, this hospitable tourism darling is throwing wide its doors to Brits with no need to test, quarantine or be vaccinated. And I wouldn’t even necessarily have to pass through France to get there if I hopped on a ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao. From there, I could live out a long-held dream of walking part of the Camino pilgrimage trail, ending up in Santander before setting sail back to Plymouth. Or I could head east, exploring the coastal cities of Valencia and Barcelona by train. I could take my time, storing up enough enjoyment and happy memories to make all those tests worth it when I finally return to British shores.

And then, stickler for the rules that I am, I would fully and lawfully abide by the quarantine restrictions, however arduous they might feel, thereby limiting the potential risk to others. Either these restrictions work, and travel should be allowed; or they don’t, in which case I’m not entirely sure why the travel ban was lifted in the first place.

Cathy Adams, head of travel: One more nasal swab is one too many

Lisbon’s old town at dusk (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I was one of those infuriating people that nipped over to Madeira earlier this week. It was green in more than one sense of the word: terraces full of lush trees spilling down into the Atlantic; steep levadas buried at the bottom of the montes (mountains). Oh, and it’s on the government’s green list, thanks to being Portuguese-owned. And yet, my nosebleed-fast trip involved three Covid tests: a Fit to Fly, a lateral flow before re-entry to the UK and a day two PCR. And that’s to a “safe” country! The time, effort and money wasted on testing and various bits of documentation is enough to put anyone off, and I’m the most panglossian traveller there is.

Then there’s the self-isolation. I quarantined with my then-10-month-old in January. It was horrible. I’m as desperate to pack off for Ibiza and clap the sunset at Cafe del Mar with a wine in hand as the next person, but on day eight of self-isolation that joy gets vacuumed away. In desperation last summer, I changed flights three times to catch the shuttering air corridors: our flight to Croatia via Lisbon eventually spat us out in mainland Greece and Hydra, which at that point didn’t require self-isolation. I plan to do that again this year.

So no, I’m not going orange. It’s the prospect of being stuck at home for 10 days; it’s the uncertainty about being tipped into expensive hotel quarantine if a destination switches to red halfway through my trip; and it’s the endless nasal swabs. Holidays were once relaxing, enjoyable periods. If Lisbon is the furthest I get this year, I’ll be happy.