Pauline
Forums Admin
The UK has created a safe travel list of countries and is adding to it and removing from it. If a UK resident leaves the country, on return they have to quarantine for 14 days if they were in an unsafe country in the past 14 days.
A month ago Spain was removed from the safe list, then two weeks ago France was removed, both because of rising new cases. Recently Portugal was added back on. The UK government has their meetings on Thursday, makes the announcement that day and it goes into effect at 4am the next Saturday (this is how it has happened recently).
We leave on Wednesday to drive across France (from the UK where we live) to Switzerland. Two weeks ago when the UK took France off the safe list, France said they would retaliate. We had two options: fly direct to Switzerland or transit through France making no stops. It seemed like France would not retaliate so we planned a leisurely 2 day drive across France, overnighting in Abbeville (near Amiens) and Langres (near Dijon) arriving in Switzerland on Friday.
We are in Switzerland for 3+ weeks so can stay in France on the way out because it will be over 14 days since we were there when return.
Today France has announced that they will retaliate in the next few days. That means we may get lucky and they won’t do anything until after we leave or we will have to transit France without stopping if they make this option available.
The UK rules for transiting a country are that you drive across without interacting with people. No one can get in your car. You can get out but you cannot be with other people. Who knows if France will do the same? You can only do this is traveling through the Chunnel. Ferries require you to get out of your car after boarding and you are officially still in France.
Germany is a safe country but Belgium and Luxembourg are not. From the Chunnel you can drive through Belgium to Aachen in Germany in under 4 hours. Then we could drive through Germany to Switzerland. We had planned to do this when returning to avoid the quarantine on return. There are a few other entry points to Germany that are more direct but have a longer driving time in a France - Schengen on the border with Luxembourg, Saarbruchen further east, or Baden-Baden. You could even drive all the way to Switzerland in under 8 hours.
It all feels arbitrary on the part of the UK but this is what we have to deal with. If we can avoid doing a quarantine by transiting unsafe countries we will. My worry right now is if France does impose restrictions, will they let us drive through to Germany or Switzerland?
I guess we should have cancelled this trip but we wanted to do it because we felt we could do it safely, staying in small towns through France, staying in a very small town the whole time in Switzerland and only going out hiking (no museums, no events, no restaurants)
From The Guardian today:
France says it is planning reciprocal quarantine arrangements for the UK
French authorities will in the coming days reciprocate Britain’s decision to impose a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals from France, the junior minister for European affairs said on Monday.
Britain said on Friday travellers from the UK to France would be required to self-certify that they are not suffering from coronavirus symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case within 14 days preceding travel.
Since 15 August British authorities have also required travellers returning from France to self-isolate upon their return due to high Covid-19 infection rates in France.
“We will have a measure called reciprocity so that our British friends do not close the border in one single way,” the French junior European affairs minister Clément Beaune told France 2 television.
“For travellers returning from the United Kingdom, there will probably be restrictive measures decided in the next few days by the prime minister and by the defence council.”
=============
A month ago Spain was removed from the safe list, then two weeks ago France was removed, both because of rising new cases. Recently Portugal was added back on. The UK government has their meetings on Thursday, makes the announcement that day and it goes into effect at 4am the next Saturday (this is how it has happened recently).
We leave on Wednesday to drive across France (from the UK where we live) to Switzerland. Two weeks ago when the UK took France off the safe list, France said they would retaliate. We had two options: fly direct to Switzerland or transit through France making no stops. It seemed like France would not retaliate so we planned a leisurely 2 day drive across France, overnighting in Abbeville (near Amiens) and Langres (near Dijon) arriving in Switzerland on Friday.
We are in Switzerland for 3+ weeks so can stay in France on the way out because it will be over 14 days since we were there when return.
Today France has announced that they will retaliate in the next few days. That means we may get lucky and they won’t do anything until after we leave or we will have to transit France without stopping if they make this option available.
The UK rules for transiting a country are that you drive across without interacting with people. No one can get in your car. You can get out but you cannot be with other people. Who knows if France will do the same? You can only do this is traveling through the Chunnel. Ferries require you to get out of your car after boarding and you are officially still in France.
Germany is a safe country but Belgium and Luxembourg are not. From the Chunnel you can drive through Belgium to Aachen in Germany in under 4 hours. Then we could drive through Germany to Switzerland. We had planned to do this when returning to avoid the quarantine on return. There are a few other entry points to Germany that are more direct but have a longer driving time in a France - Schengen on the border with Luxembourg, Saarbruchen further east, or Baden-Baden. You could even drive all the way to Switzerland in under 8 hours.
It all feels arbitrary on the part of the UK but this is what we have to deal with. If we can avoid doing a quarantine by transiting unsafe countries we will. My worry right now is if France does impose restrictions, will they let us drive through to Germany or Switzerland?
I guess we should have cancelled this trip but we wanted to do it because we felt we could do it safely, staying in small towns through France, staying in a very small town the whole time in Switzerland and only going out hiking (no museums, no events, no restaurants)
From The Guardian today:
France says it is planning reciprocal quarantine arrangements for the UK
French authorities will in the coming days reciprocate Britain’s decision to impose a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals from France, the junior minister for European affairs said on Monday.
Britain said on Friday travellers from the UK to France would be required to self-certify that they are not suffering from coronavirus symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case within 14 days preceding travel.
Since 15 August British authorities have also required travellers returning from France to self-isolate upon their return due to high Covid-19 infection rates in France.
“We will have a measure called reciprocity so that our British friends do not close the border in one single way,” the French junior European affairs minister Clément Beaune told France 2 television.
“For travellers returning from the United Kingdom, there will probably be restrictive measures decided in the next few days by the prime minister and by the defence council.”
=============
