Hi there and a belated happy New Year to you!

We have just got back to Grenada after a wonderful five week holiday in Europe. We were really looking forward to catching up with family and friends but were a little trepiditious about travelling with Omicron on the rise and all the changes to covid rules and regulations that that entailed. As we left Grenada Switzerland had just closed its borders to travellers from the UK – but we thought we’d just take it one step at a time and deal with issues as they came up.

Our trip did not start well. We arrived at the airport to fly to Heathrow and found we needed a PCR test for Barbados, we assumed that as we were transitting through it would not be necessary. Luckily a lab a couple of minutes drive away was open and able (at great expense) to test us and let us have the results in 20 minutes. Great – we were on the plane!  Unfortunately when we arrived in Barbados we had to be tested again as the RT-PCR test from Grenada was not acceptable. Two tests in four hours, a sign of things to come. The rest of the journey was uneventful and we arrived happily at my Mum’s house in Devon the next morning.

Life in a Devon village is very undemanding and the days slipped by in a succession good food, fine wine and walks to the village shop for more supplies. Once we received the results of our day two PCR tests we were able to visit my Dad each day, it was great to see him so well and cheery. One day we drove down to Cornwall and had lunch in Fowey, a small picturesque fishing village on an estuary on the south coast. There were very few tourists around and we enjoyed walking around the town, watching the gulls and smelling the briney smell of seaweed and salt water.

After a couple of weeks we flew to Portgual to stay with my brother but decided to spend a few days in Barcelona on the way – it’s not exactly en route but we both wanted a bit of European culture and Barcelona seemed like a great city to visit. Spain was easy; no covid test required, just a bit of form-filling and we were in. We stayed at a lovely old hotel in the Gothic Quarter and once we’d worked out the bus system we travelled all over town gaping at Gaudi monuments and pondering over Picasso’s incredible paintings.

We walked around the Ramblas enjoying the architecture, poking around in the little shops and picking up tapas and a glass of wine for lunch. On the last day we discovered the market, an amazing spectacle of colour and light and smell: haunches of jamon hanging over the the butchers counter, mountains of spices, olives and nuts of all kinds, vast arrays of seafood packed in ice. We love exploring markets!

It was a rapid antigen test, more form-filling and a short flight to Lisbon, where we hired a car and drove down to Lagos to see Toby. We spent five days catching up on news, inspecting his most recent home improvements and more eating and drinking delicious things.  Toby is a great cook and, despite the miserable weather, we enjoyed several meals on the terrace cooking on the barbeque table that he designed – which also kept our knees warm.

While in Lagos we reunited with some Brazilian sailing buddies Cecilia, Fabio and Igor who had left Grenada earlier this year. After a summer in the Azores they have settled in Lagos for a couple of years, their boat is in the marina and Cecilia is teaching in a local school. It was lovely to see them again.

Back to Devon for Christmas and of course more great food and good cheer, rainy days and log fires, and the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special – still brilliant after all these years! We treated Mum to lunch at the Five Bells, a nearby gastro-pub with rave reviews, and had a fabulous meal; local produce prepared with great creativity and flair.

We flew to Switzerland to spend New Year with my sister Josephine and her family. Luckily the Swiss had reversed their policy of banning travellers from the UK and just required another covid test (our eigth so far) and more forms to fill in. The chalet in Crans-Montana was pretty crowded as Toby and his girlfriend Crissie had arrived the same day and with Andre, Mimi and Felix we were eight. It was the first time the three siblings had been together for many years so there was plenty of laughing, teasing, stories, memories, confessions – it was wonderful.

Neil and I brushed up our skiing/snowboarding skills with a quick glance at a couple YouTube videos then we were out on the slopes. The rest of the family are all amazingly proficient but were very patient as we hurtled around bouncing off moguls and ploughing into snow drifts. We eventually got our “ski legs” but after a couple of days we handed back our equipment, we were too bruised and battered to take any more!

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. We had a wonderful holiday, saw many friends and spent valuable time with family. We were very glad we weren’t put off by all the complications covid has introduced to travelling. It was really was quite straight forward but just took a bit more planning; understanding the requirements for each country, getting the tests and results in time and filling in endless forms. We wouldn’t have missed it for anything!

Suzy and Neil