Corona 5

I've finally had to admit defeat and accept that the 2020 tour, will now not take place, thus becoming the 2021 tour.

Last week I had a notification from one of the hotels I'd booked, in Berlin actually, that they were cancelling my booking. It's not Covid-19 related, maybe having a refurb or something but that prompted me to take an earlier than planned look at all my other bookings. Some had been booked as non-refundable (it's unavoidable sometimes), so I checked once again, whether they would expect payment, given the circumstances. I also made it clear that I was intending to re-schedule for 2021, so if they could change dates to next year, I'd be happy to do that. All said there would be no charges but all bar one said I would need to cancel and re-book at a later date. One however, has re-dated the booking for 31st December 2021, asking me to let them know once I know the date I want next year and they will then re-book that date for me. All the other bookings were cancel F.O.C. so there weren't any issues cancelling them. Booking.com has a Covid-19 reason for cancellation now. They like to know the reason, if you cancel a booking.

My next task, to tidy things up, will be to contact the attractions I have pre-booked and see if they will refund or re-date. There were also a few that I booked an English speaking tour for but not paid anything, so I've got about 5 emails to fire off in all. 

I'm gutted that I'll be stuck in the UK, when I could have been galavanting around Europe but it just can't be helped. For everyone's sake, let's hope we don't have Covid-20 or 21 next year!

Looking forward, I've already completed a route for the 2022 tour. It's a tour of Italy mainly, to commemorate Grizzly turning some aged milestone and will involve visits to really old places, such as Rome, where he probably has some boyhood memories of gladiators and the like. It's way too early to do any real planning but it's still nice to get an early indication of the distances involved and timescale. I expect it'll be the same as next year's tour pretty much, 4500 miles or so and a month away. What else have us retirees to do, eh?

That's all for now.

Stay safe.

Corona 4

Well, with 37 days left till our planned departure, we are still in lockdown. Here, at least till 7th May (and I suspect longer) and in Ireland till 18th.

A quick check at the travel advice on GOV.UK shows that all the countries we are due to visit have border closures or restrictions and even if we could justify travelling, a number would expect us to self isolate for 14 days once across the border. Maybe things will change over the course of the next month but I can't see them returning to normal that quickly, so I'm even more resigned to postponing everything till 2021. It's a bummer but the main thing is we remain safe to tour again another day. One thing is for sure, people won't forget 2020 in a hurry.

Stay safe everybody and remember, Stay at Home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives.