Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Monday the 17th of March.

Happy St Patrick's Day, but I am only peripherally going to be talking about Ireland because it is five years today since the first travel restrictions were imposed by the British government aimed at British travellers as a result of

what was then known as the Wuhan coronavirus. Yes, we had the very first global travel advisory saying

do not go abroad. The effect was to immediately suspend all outbound package holidays and to invalidate

standard travel insurance. And the announcement was in response to the clattering shutter frontiers

around the world. The UK actually remained open. But very soon, ministers started imposing all manner of travel restrictions.

It scuppered tens of millions of travel plans and wrecked the finances of airlines, cruise lines,

train operators and holiday firms. I've been looking back at some of the most substantial changes

and let's start on that particular day, the 17th

March 2020. I had just arrived in Cairo from Yemen. Over the previous week, I noticed that things

were not going entirely well. I'd been in Arabia and actually ended up having to hitchhike and get other forms of

transport across to Cairo to get my flight into Yemen in the first place. And for instance,

I remember going through Israel and being told, you're not coming back once I left. And at the

time, everything was in disarray. Nobody quite knew what was going on.

And yes, it was a well-meaning attempt to stop people being trapped abroad. But pretty soon,

the restrictions began. 22nd of May was when, just as other countries were opening up and the World Health Organization

continues to say international travel bans are largely futile. The then Home Secretary, Pretty

Patel, said that anybody coming in from abroad, apart of course from Ireland, which was never on

any list of quarantine locations, she said, yep, you've got to

self-isolate for a fortnight. Now we're past the peak of this virus, famous last words. We must take

steps to guard against imported cases, triggering a resurgence of this deadly disease. So you had to go

into quarantine from June until a month later and when

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