Testing, and vaccines, and forms, oh my: How travel became the preserve of the administratively gifted

The number of hoops to jump through is likely to put off all but the hardiest of pen pushers, argues Helen Coffey

Travel in the Covid age requires a lot more than just a passport (Getty/iStockphoto)

“Tests I will need”; “Forms I will need”; “Paperwork I will need”.

These three lists, jotted down as I planned a potential itinerary for a trip abroad next month, take up an entire page in my notebook.

As I try to get excited about the matter in hand – an elaborate overland and sea adventure that will reach Morocco via France and then return through Spain – the bullet-pointed phrases keep staring up at me accusingly.

“You really think there’s any chance you’ll have fun doing this?” they seem to ask with, quite frankly, more than a touch of attitude. “You really think you can ‘cut loose’ when there’s this much admin to accomplish? Admin that, if completed with anything less than 100 per cent accuracy, will probably cause you to be stranded in north Africa?”

And however much I might want to say, “Pfft, whatever bullet points – I’m a 34-year-old woman, I can do what I bloody well like”, it is hard to fundamentally argue with these sentiments.

In normal times – OK, pre-pandemic times (who knows what normal will look like in the years to come?) – I am a semi-professional trip planner. I get a weird kick out of compiling the perfect timetable, complete with an overzealous, hour-by-hour breakdown of activities. I am an old-school, analogue girl, too: all travel tickets, reservations and contact details are printed off in advance; train times are scribbled down by hand; complex daily itineraries are painstakingly enshrined in a notebook. And all of it stowed in a plastic wallet, kept alongside my passport and purse in a designated “essential documents” pocket of my rucksack. Yes, I am indeed insufferable.

So if anyone was primed and ready to take on the extra red tape necessitated by pandemic restrictions, ’twas I. But it turns out we all have our limit – and mine appears to be a minimum of four Covid-19 tests, one of which needs to be taken on board an almost two-day ferry ride, plus four separate passenger locator forms. This rigmarole will be accompanied by the constant, churning anxiety of knowing the rules could change at the drop of a hat in any one of four countries, leaving me stuck far from home and, potentially, on another continent.

One can rant and rail about Morocco refusing to recognise the NHS Covid Pass but, as we haven’t accepted their proof of vaccine yet either, kicking up a fuss would seem the height of British exceptionalism

First, there’s the crossing to France. It’s light on the testing front – as a fully vaccinated Brit I can whizz straight over on the Eurostar, cheers Macron – though I will need to complete a “sworn statement” (the spiffily named declaration sur l’honneur) form assuring the French government that I am not suffering from coronavirus symptoms and have not been in contact with confirmed cases in the previous fortnight, no sir.

Next up is the two-test tango required when travelling from Marseille to Morocco – Tangier, to be exact – by boat. There’s the negative PCR test result, received no more than 72 hours before departure – which, in fact, could be done in the UK before I leave, such are the timings. Then there is the second test that must be taken while on the ferry. The crossing is so long that a negative lateral flow is required before they’ll let you off the other side. Of course, one can rant and rail about Morocco refusing to recognise the NHS Covid Pass, proving my fully vaxxed status – but as we haven’t accepted their proof of vaccine yet either, kicking up a fuss would seem the height of British exceptionalism. Oh, and I’ll also need my completed Public Health Passenger form before I set sail, too.

Once in Tangier, I can enjoy a blissful test-free five days, concentrating on my usual enjoyable level of admin – elaborate lists of restaurants and attractions and trains to Rabat or Fes and back. But the break will be short-lived: after those five days, further “trav-min” will loom as I cross the Moroccan border to the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta, from where I’ll hopefully catch the zippy boat across to Algeciras in mainland Spain. I’ll need a pre-travel declaration form for that, but my double-jabbed status should have me swerve further testing.

Next, another break from the paperwork as I weave my way north on three Spanish trains on a 14-hour journey all the way to Bilbao. The slow travel will get even slower from that point, as I walk part of the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage over the course of five glorious, test-free days, winding up in Santander.

That’s when the admin ramps up once more, thanks to the UK’s own rather burdensome rules – in addition to yet another passenger locator form (which, my colleague Simon Calder has reliably informed me, is seemingly “devised as a homage to Kafka”), I must present a negative lateral flow test to make it on to the ferry to Portsmouth. Within two days of arrival back in the UK, I’m required to take a second, more expensive, PCR test – which seems a tad onerous considering my vaccinated status.

Why on earth isn’t this crazy woman just flying to Morocco and saving herself reams of paperwork?

And all of the above will only be possible if things go smoothly – if my paperwork is accepted and if, crucially, all my Covid tests come back negative. If they don’t, well… I suppose my trip will take even longer than planned. The big worry is that Morocco will be nudged on to the red list at one of the government’s next traffic-light updates, in which case I’ll have to cough up more than £2,000 for the pleasure of spending 11 nights in hotel quarantine. No, thank you. In that case, I openly admit that I’ll be using the services of the “red-list launderette” and wringing out my red status in amber Spain for the full 10 days needed to escape the dreaded HQ.

If you’re thinking, “Why on earth isn’t this crazy woman just flying to Morocco and saving herself reams of paperwork?”, it is a question I’ve asked myself multiple times over the past few days. But at the beginning of the year, I signed up to Flight Free UK’s 2021 pledge, promising to stay grounded for 12 months for the sake of the climate. Call it principles, call it idiocy, but I’ve nailed my colours to the mast now; it’s far too late to back down.

All of this is to say that even I, a travel editor immersed daily in the complex web of rules that must be untangled in order to sail off into the sunset, feel myself buckling under the weight of such admin baggage. As someone who enjoys the finer details of a madcap travel plan, even I am left wondering if I should hold my hands up in defeat and not bother.

Alas, unless restrictions ease soon, I fear travel is destined to end up the preserve of the most hyper-organised people on the planet – or those rich enough to afford a PA...