On Friday 25th June we lost our nerve and decided to travel as soon as possible. COVID-19 cases in the UK were rising fast – fuelled by the Delta variant. There were indications that EU countries might move to tighten restrictions for travellers from the UK driven by a hard line stance from Angela Merkel. We decided to rebook for Tuesday 29th in the hope we would still be able to drive.
The French entry requirements were a negative lateral flow test taken within 48 hours of departure, full vaccination and a written declaration that we were COVID-19 free. The Italian requirements were more stringent: a negative lateral flow test taken within 48 hours of arrival, a completed locator form and 5 days of quarantine (to be monitored by the local health authority who we would need to notify on arrival) followed by a further lateral flow test.
So the main challenges were to get across the Italian border within 48 hours of being tested and to stock up with 5 days of food before entering Italy (as we would need to drive straight to the house without stopping).
This is how it went. We drove to a test facility at Heathrow for 9am tests with a 1 hour turn around.
We continued from there to Dover and received the test results by email before we got there. We went through French border control before boarding the ferry. They wanted to see the negative tests and our vaccination status via the NHS app. They were not interested in the written declarations. At 2pm we set sail – first major hurdle cleared.
Never seen a ferry car deck this empty before
We drove till supper time and stopped in a hotel near the motorway outside Reims. We knew the next day would be a marathon so we turned in straight after supper.
Early breakfast and on the road by 8:30. We had already filled in our locator forms for a 17:00 crossing via the Mont Blanc tunnel so that is what we were aiming for. We stopped to stock up on food at a Carrefour in the French alps and made it to the queue for the tunnel by 17:45.
5 days of food bought
The tunnel was only operating in one direction at a time so we had a lengthy wait. We watched our predicted time of arrival at the house ticking up and up. It was extremely frustrating and aggravating. After about two hours, it was eventually our turn and we were just waved through Italian customs without having to show anything.
The moment we hit Italy, we also hit roadworks – one set after another. The ETA kept on going up. Then we hit Genoa and found that the E80 motorway in the direction of Livorno (and more to the point Lucca) was closed. We tried heading down alternative roads, but our sat nav kept bringing us back to the same closed section of motorway. If you’ve ever driven round Genoa you’ll know how winding and confusing the roads are. It was near midnight and we were tired and fractious and were getting nowhere fast.
Eventually we switched from our sat nav to Google maps which seemed to know about the motorway closure. It took us along the old SS1 coast road instead. Half an hour or so later we were back on the motorway with another couple of hours driving ahead of us.
At about 2:30am we pulled up at the house, fished out the keys and let ourselves in. We then spent about 10 minutes searching for the main electricity switch with only the torches on our phones for light.
Once we had light, we unloaded everything from the car into the entrance hall and put the car away in the garage. We fired up the fridge and put all the food shopping away. We found beds and settled down around 4am totally shattered and pretty overwhelmed.
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