The true cost of my week in Wales

Rather miraculously, my daughter managed to leave the country last week to go on holiday with a group of friends. To celebrate finishing their A-levels, they had bought tickets to a music festival in Croatia, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to a surge in Covid cases. Having been denied every other rite of passage in the past year, they decided to press ahead with the trip anyway, which left me having to sort out the PCR testing logistics.

In order to be allowed into Croatia, she had to produce evidence of a negative test, then, once there, she had to test negative again in order to be allowed back into the UK, as well as produce evidence that she’d booked a third PCR test for two days after her return. Six days after that she had to take yet another test and only if that was negative would she be released from quarantine.

To complicate matters, Croatia was moved from the ‘amber’ to the ‘green’ list 48 hours before her departure, which I wrongly thought meant she could dispense with all the testing, save for the one she needed to get into Croatia. I cancelled the ones I’d booked, secured a refund, then discovered that, in fact, you still need the pre-flight and post-flight tests. The only difference being on the ‘green’ list makes is you don’t have to take a second test once you’re back home and don’t have to self-isolate. The cost of the tests was more than £300.

I have long suspected that the reason the government has made it so difficult — and expensive — to travel abroad this summer is because it wants Britons who’ve saved money over the past 16 months to spend it in the UK and not in the South of France or the Costa del Sol.