This may surprise you but I did manage to travel a bit during this fateful year. There were three main trips: Portugal, America and France, and they mark also the progress of the pandemic, from blissful ignorance to a vague anxiety, then full-blown mayhem.
Portugal, January 2020
We drove, in a Land Rover Discovery, all the way to Braga in Portugal. A relative of mine was relocating there and this was the big move.
We set off from Hemel Hempstead, drove the Tunnel and headed directly for Bordeaux, bypassing Paris. We overnighted in Bordeaux, then drove to the North west of Spain, stopping there for a night. We completed the journey the next morning.
I flew back to the UK from Oporto.
Impressions
The majesty of the mountains, the emptiness of Northern Spain, the cold, the resonance of Portugal in our family landscape.
America, February 2020
I visited there in early February to speak at the MicroStrategy World conference in Orlando.
Impressions
Harry Potter World, Cape Kennedy Space Centre. Warm weather in February, the Pandemic moving from the background into our lives.
France, September-October 2020
I travelled to France to work on a major upgrade for a MicroStrategy customer. This was fully Covid-constrained travel – masks, second waves and all.
Impressions
Absurdly cheap train travel, extinct volcanoes, wonderful food and people, wearing a @£&** mask all the time.
Empty airports and planes, lost luggage being a blessing of sorts, near failure of travel plan.
The biggest journey
The brutal crimp imposed by the pandemic is the biggest adventure for us all .We may have been confined but everything else has moved around us – and we have discovered useful things about what really matters, what we can do without and what we take for granted.
And what about 2021 ?
I have a single first class return from Paris via Eurostar. I was going to go to Paris before Xmas but have managed to move and rebook my ticket for late February. It’s now a matter of getting over to Paris somehow, and hoping that Eurostar still operates – the Pandemic and Brexit have made it fairly challenging. Such fun !
Anyway, have a great and happy New Year.
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