Rejoice, says Andrea Leadsom. Writing in the Daily Express this week, the leading Brexiteer and former business secretary promises “sunlit uplands” are on the horizon.
Anyone who sees Brexit as a catastrophic act of self-harm forced through by xenophobic charlatans, which will only diminish the UK and constrain British travellers, is clearly mistaken.
You, Andrea and I must move on. So I commend a tour of six sunlit uplands, coincidentally all in Europe.
I have been researching diligently all year: starting in the epitome of unity, Luxembourg, whose hills ripple right across the land.
On 29 February, the trains, trams and buses sparkled in the sun as the Grand Duchy launched its world-beating policy of nationwide free public transport. Rejoice: however low the pound may sink, the cost for Brits venturing the length and breadth of Luxembourg will not rise by a penny.
In July, the UK’s bizarre 33-day blanket quarantine policy (three months later than other nations, forcing self-isolation on all arriving travellers) was revoked. I promptly flew to Nice and ascended to the sunny hills of Provence. The deep south of France proved a haze of delight, with pines and vines gently warming in the sun.
Almost continuously from 17 March to the end of the year, mainland Portugal was deemed “unacceptably high risk” for British holidaymakers because of the rates of new coronavirus infections (currently around half those of the UK). But when the country was taken briefly off the government’s no-go list in August, I snuck in.
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