Got back to Cardiff on Friday after taking a slightly circuitous route from Capena to avoid having to quarantine. I checked the government advice and filled in an on-line self-declaration locator form you’re supposed to show at the UK border before re-entry.
Night 1 was in a pensione in Fontanellato, just north of Parma. Basically a castle and a huge moat!
Everything went really well until I got to the last service station in Italy before the Swiss border. I bought a coffee with my Monzo card and got back into my car. Two Carabinieri were lounging against the counter without masks and everyone else was PPE’d up to the hilt. Suddenly a sandy-haired man in his mid thirties with a young boy of about 9 started waving at me. Thinking I’d got something wrong with my car he wanted to tell me about, I rolled the window down.
Turned out he wanted to give me a sob story about having had everything stolen and asked me for money to get home. “I’ll transfer it to you when I get home to Ireland”. He did indeed have a strong southern Irish accent.
I said “sorry, can’t help” and thought “good try”. Then he went ballistic and called me a “fucking English whore”, paused, looked in the car at the dog and the camping gear, and screamed “fucking scruffy English whore”.
Then he cursed me and told me he hoped I’d die on the motorway and if he saw me on the motorway he’d “cut me up into little fucking bits”.
“Great”, I thought, now I’ve got to play out my very own version of Duel with a mad Irishman.
In the event I zipped through Switzerland without stopping, except for petrol. UK government advice says you can do this without having to quarantine even though Switzerland is on the list. There are quite precise rules for people arriving at the UK border under their own steam. Of course I used masks and hand sanitizer. Interestingly enough, the Swiss border guards were the only ones I saw not wearing masks.
Night 2 was in the Black Forest.
I got out my wallet to pay for a couple of extras at the hotel (breakfast and Lottie) only to have my Monzo card declined. Turned out the balance had been cleaned out, with everything being spent on online gambling sites. It’s hard to think it didn’t have something to do with the dodgy Irishman, but I’ll probably never know where and when the card details were taken…
I already had a good opinion of Monzo and they were fantastic. I reported the fraud with two clicks (no phone calls) and the money was back on my card the next day. A new card was waiting for me at home.
Day 3 on the road was the biggie, I had to get to Calais around 6 pm to get my slot on the shuttle. In the end, the 7 hour drive went smoothly. In the latter part, the French motorways were virtually empty. Hope I didn’t get caught speeding: I had a French speeding ticket waiting for me when I got back to Cardiff from my outward trip to Italy. Talk about efficiency!
My toll gadget really helped as I didn’t have to get out of the car to pay, just once for petrol and to stretch my legs. Found a couple of painted pebbles, which had obviously been left for a purpose.
Back in the UK (surprise, surprise, no one asked to see my locator form at the border), I gratefully crawled into a hotel in Folkestone and drove the last 4 hours back to Cardiff early next day.
This week is taken up with a big translation job and getting ready for my trip to Ingleton and Caeder Idris with Dad next week. We’re going to see my cousins and then scatter Mum’s ashes on the mountain, which is second highest on Wales.
Even though I have no Covid symptoms, I’ve decided to take a test to make sure I haven’t inadvertently brought any unwanted hitchhikers. You’re not supposed to take a test unless you have symptoms, but I thought the whole point was that people without symptoms are infecting others because they’re unaware they’re carrying the disease 🤔.
Common sense tells me that my cousins and my brother’s family will feel safer to share space with me if I have a negative test result. Leon and Lily took a test before they came to see me in Italy, and it meant we could be more relaxed together, though still taking care. Hopefully, testing at borders will soon be routine in the UK as it is in other countries (where they offer results in 30 minutes to boot). In the meantime I’m doing my own version of it…
2022 and all that 