As holidaymakers and travellers from the UK face airports, delays, proof of ‘spends’ tests in Spain – and massive flight and other travel costs, the Society’s Leigh and Andrea tell the tale of their incredible journey from Portugal to Spain …

It was cheaper, more comfortable – a chauffer-driven road trip by taxi!

Prices etc have changed since the article first appeared last year – but the principle may steer you in the right direction if you don’t want to spend hours in cattle-prod airports and potentially planes the can air condition Covid!

Leigh and Andrea have lived in many parts of Europe and last summer they took three months off to explore two of their favourite countries to find their perfect place abroad.

They planned a route from the historic Portuguese capital of Lisbon where they looked at luxury apartments, checked out a studio flat at a golfing complex near Praia de Luz and town houses in the Spanish city of Huelva.

Next was a cave house near the blue lakes of Ronda – a villa in the rich man’s resort of Estepona, then they headed off to the beach town of Nerja where traditional white houses come at a premium.

Their last stop was on the Costa Blanca, a one-way trip of more than 1,500 miles.

And amazingly they did it all by taxi – because it was cheaper than renting a car!

“We’d just finished renovating a big old cottage in the UK which had put our plans to move abroad on hold for four years and now we were ready to go,” Leigh, a journalist and broadcaster, said: “So we decided to have a look round, we knew it would be either in Spain or Portugal, but that was all.”

The idea was to hire cars along the way.

But as they packed at the beginning of June news broke about the investigation into car hire.

“We’d booked and we were trusting them to supply us with other cars along the route. When we heard they were being investigated it was a bit worrying to say the least.

“Anyway, we decided to take our chance with them as we already knew that trying to travel across the two countries by train wouldn’t take us near any of the houses we wanted to see and bus and coach travel was just too slow.”

Andrea, who runs her own company, said: “We checked with Europcar a few days before we planned to pick up a vehicle and that was the first blow. They told us we would have to pay an exorbitant fee to drop the car off at a different location. Nobody told us that when we made the initial booking.

“Luckily, no money had exchanged hands so we told them what to do with their car.

“The price of hiring a VW Golf or similar was 132 euros but then they hit us with a 100 euros drop-off fee! Then we had to pay 27 euros for insurance, 5 euros for a waver AND leave about 1,000 euro deposit. But it wasn’t possible anyway because they  wouldn’t let us take it across the border. It was outrageous!”

Getting around Lisbon, Portugal, by tram

So, they left Lisbon by train and headed to the golf paradise of Porto Donna Maria, a twenty minute walk from `Pria de Luz, the town where Madeleine McCann vanished.

All the villas and apartments have terraces or balconies over looking the Luz Bay but    Andrea says, the area felt depressed and haunted.

So, the couple, who live in the Midlands, decided to check out their next destination, Huelva, the nearest Spanish city to the Portuguese border, a  200 mile trip.

Cross Portugal border into Spain:

Taxi: £175 – car hire, not possible

“We’d actually arranged to pick up a vehicle in Huelva but when we went to do it they wanted 100 euros to drop it off at the next port of call,” Andrea said.

The couple were hit with the unexpected charge as leading car hire firms were being accused of charging excess insurance, blocking off up to £1,000 on credit cards to pay for any damage, charging extra to people who didn’t book online, charging  inflated prices for petrol and adding surcharges for hiring at the airport.

Leigh said: “Nobody told us there are the  restrictions on taking rental vehicles from one city to another – we’ve driven across America from Dallas to San Francisco in rental cars without any problem, or excess charges.

“But it is almost like the rental firms are cashing in on the lack of rail connections between tourist destinations in Europe.

“Even if you took a car from airport to airport  you still would have paid the punitive destination-to-destination charge.

“We quickly discovered it was actually cheaper to go by taxi.”

Ronda valley, the kind of view you get from a taxi!

Huelva to Estepona (via Ronda):

Taxi 350 euros  –  car hire almost 300 euros plus petrol and taxi back from drop-off point

Estepona  is a rich man’s paradise going to seed with the inevitable ‘strip’ of shops and cafes and bars selling gassy lager and  hamburger and chips. Villas with a pool start at about £1m euros.

So, back in a taxi, this time an ordinary white cab for the 100 miles journey from Estepona to Nerja.

Monjas Square in Huelva

Estepona to Nerja:

Taxi 200 euros – car hire refused because of lack of drop-off point

Like all of the Costas, Nerja has spread replicant houses and apartment blocks across its seafront and into the Sierra de Tejadas mountains. Prices were high and little chance of finding long-term rent.

Nerja to Torreveija:

Taxi 350 euros – car hire, not available

And so to the final leg of this incredible journey across a large part of Europe –  350 euros by taxi, from Nerja to the pink salt flats of Torreveija on the Costa Blanca where house prices are rising rapidly but you can still find a four bedroom villa with pool in the mountains less than 30 minutes from the beach for around euros 150,000 euros.

The Costa Blanca – near to where Leigh and Andrea have decided to settle

Leigh and Andrea are hoping to find a place in Hondon Valley, a little known agricultural and wine area near to Alicante. Their journey continues.

So as car hire firms are stinging holidaymakers with rip-off charges for scratches, child car seats and petrol refills, we discovered the best and cheapest way is to travel in style with air-conditioning and a chauffeur and if anybody ‘dings’ your car, well it just isn’t your problem!

It’s almost like we ex-pats have been punished for leaving the clammy shores of the UK.

Some of us fled Britain for sun, sea and sangria, others left for health reasons or cheap property. Some for life style. Still others retired to Europe and some, like us, came out for business reasons.

But it was always seen as part of the deal that we could go ‘home’ again to see family, friends, check on your property, even. And in some cases get your ‘travel wagon’ MoT-ed.

Then Brexit happened, the parting of the ways. Next Covid stopped the world in its tracks. It just got harder and harder to cross the revised politics of the world to get back to Blighty.

And it only got worse when, a few weeks ago, it became clear that UK ex-pats who’d had their vaccine double-jabs in the now alien climes of Europe would still have to self-isolate – possibly at vast expense – on their return.

And it was all because nobody had bothered to make sure that Europe’s hi-tech health paraphernalia would recognise the UK’s.

Or visa versa.

Anyway, the problem appears to be solved, thanks to new Government promises, NHS doctors and their staff.

Ministers plan to recognise foreign jabs from August 1.

At the moment restrictions on quarantine-free travel to and from amber list countries is difficult because the Government only recognises people who have been vaccinated by the NHS.

But the Department for Transport is to holding a formal review of the rules for arriving travellers this week.

However, all you have to do is phone your UK surgery, give the practice details of your foreign jabs and they will register you on the British NHS computers.

We’ve just done it. And job done – hopefully.

We’re now waiting for them to get back to us with confirmation that we are welcome back in the land of our birth.

This is, as far as we can understand, the reality of the situation and far beyond the stuffy press release from Boris and his bonkers band …

‘Ministers are preparing to ease travel rules for expats returning to the UK. The exemption from quarantine currently only applies to people who were vaccinated under the UK programme, but the Government plans to recognise foreign jabs.’

While good old Blighty blisters under summer heatwaves rarely seen before the Brits moan about it being hard to get away for a fortnight in the sun!

And, on the other hand ex-pats, like us, who want to go home, are being made to self-isolate because the NHS doesn’t recognise the jabs we legitimately had in Slovakia or the rest of Europe!

But be you a thwarted holidaymaker or a despairing returnee, one question very few seem to be asking our leaders is: “How long am I going to be protected by my jabs – the rest of my life or just a few weeks?”

It’s an important question that nobody knows the answer to – and for good reason. The vaccines haven’t been around long enough for us to work it out.

But this lack of knowledge, something we can do little about at the moment, and massive distrust is leading to major protests and dissent across the world.

And a few days ago the protests hit the parliamentary building in Bratislava… hundreds of people protested over a vote on new anti-Covid measures.

The anti-vaccers, object to an amendment that will allow the government to draft different measures for people who have been vaccinated and those who haven’t. Police at one point were said to have used tear gas to control the crowds.

So, who is right? And what do we actually know about how long the vaccine will keep us safe?

There is no doubt in most peoples’ minds – official and man-on-the-street – that vaccines have weakened the link between infection and hospitalisation.

But vaccines are definitely not the silver bullet against this slimy fatty blob (yes, the coronavirus bug has an uncanny resemblance to many of our politicians!) that has spent the best part of two years sucking freedom from our blood.

We simply don’t know how long protection lasts for those who are vaccinated. It’s a mystery.

However, two studies say that infection-induced immunity might last months or longer and vaccination may lengthen this immunity.

Well, nobody told me that when I bared my flaccid arm to a pneumatic young lady in a matching white coat and mask in an over-bearing utilitarian multi-storey school in the Slovak mountainside city where I was living temporarily.

According to one of the studies – Trusted Source, carried out for Nature – immune cells in our bone marrow keep a “memory” of coronavirus and protect us.

The other study decided that immune cells strengthen for about a year after infection.

“The data suggest that immunity in convalescent individuals will be very long lasting.” both studies suggest.

So, would it have been better to take it on the chin, or in the chest to be more accurate?

As the unprecedented vaccination programmes continues across the world, let’s look at the evidence: Vaccines for other viruses like influenza – which itself has many variants – give just a fleeting protection and need to be renewed every year.

However, others, for measles, mumps and rubella, give us lifelong protection.

Things are so uncertain that Pfizer is charged with producing 85 million booster shots for Australia in the next year.

Yale Medicine, one of the largest academic multispecialty practices in America, had this to say: “Though researchers know the vaccines have been effective against COVID-19 thus far, there is no track record to provide data for the future, which is the only way to know for sure.”

They say a vaccine is protective as long as we are measuring it.

Yale’s infectious diseases specialist Jaimie Meyer, MD, MS said: “The three coronavirus vaccines authorized for use in the United States provide a high degree of protection for at least three months, based on clinical trials.

“however, a  report in The New England Journal of Medicine  said that Moderna vaccine remained high for six months after the second shot.”

So, have the conspiracy theorists got lucky?

Are vaccines just a shot in the dark? A pernicious, dangerous, unknown invasion of our 60,000 miles of veins?

Yep, there are still nagging doubts about how long protection from the coronavirus vaccines will last. Will it wear off gradually or suddenly?

Will we burn and crash?

Or will we just need a booster shot?

Unfortunately, nobody can answer these questions.

All we do know for certain is that almost 40 million of us in the UK got so frightened of getting coronasvirus that we allowed Boris to get his people to stick a needle in our arms and fill us full of unknown drugs.

No wonder so many today – particularly on social media – are calling him the biggest Prick in good old blighted Blighty.

#blighty #boris #uk #vaccine #howlong #expats #holidays

In recent days on sites like this, people who have chosen to live abroad for whatever reason have been expressing their dismay at being described as ex-pats.

Some say the word expat is loaded with innuendo, insult and whiffs of old spice and colonialism. They see it as a sniffy term conjuring up white linen suits, panamas hats, G&Ts, punkahwallas and privilege in the blistering sun.

It’s a very British word, an insulting cut above being an immigrant or a migrant or even a foreign worker.

So I began to ponder what makes one person an expat, and another a foreign worker or migrant?

And I realised the distinction matters, because the difference in definition can become racist and dehumanising.

It is a way of defining sets of people … one aloof, well-off and nationalistic despite their abandonment of their homeland.

The other – migrants – can be seen as suggesting somebody on the run, a boat person. Broken families at definable borders.

Well, I have spent many decades of my life crossing borders so that I could work in my chosen job. I am a writer, editor and broadcaster.

There is no doubt that in the UK immigration and the movement of workers across borders were two of the defining political issues of the Brexit referendum and in the US, jobs and immigration were at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s sad victory.

And there is no doubt that my job as a travelling writer has become more difficult. Forgetting about Covid for a moment, it has just become harder to get about.

Academics have spent years trying to categorise people like me. Are we ex-pats or migrants, immigrants?

Dr Yvonne McNulty who has been trying to define the terms for at SIM University in Singapore. says: “It’s not about the colour of your skin, and it’s not about the salary that you earn.”

A business expatriate, she says, is a legally working individual who resides temporarily in a country of which they are not a citizen, in order to accomplish a career-related goal no matter the pay or skill level.

But Chris Brewster, another researcher, says she’s wrong. Migrants, by definition “are people who intend to go and live in a county for a long time and they’re not allowed to. They have to go home when they’ve completed their assignment.”

However, Malte Zeeck, founder and co-CEO of InterNations, the world’s largest expat network, with 2.5 million members in 390 cities around the world, says: “It’s all about the motivations behind their decision to move abroad.

“There are many types of expat with many different reasons to do so,” Malte says: “For an ex-pat, living abroad is rather a lifestyle choice. not borne out of economic necessity or dire circumstances in their home country such as oppression or persecution.

“Immigrants are usually defined as people who have come to a different country in order to live there permanently, whereas expats move abroad for a limited amount of time or have not yet decided upon the length of their stay.”

So, in fact I think that calling yourself an ex-pat is just a way of describing yourself as somebody who got lucky and moved abroad.

Yes, it has old cultural implications but so do so many things in the rich world of developing language.

So, what do you think? Do you want to be known as an ex-pat? A migrant? An immigrant? An itinerant worker?

#expat #foriegn #migrant #immigrant #lifestlye

Authorities in Moravia and parts of the Czechia have asked for volunteers to stay away.

Government leaders have said that so many volunteers have turned up to help that rescue areas are over-flowing – and thousands of firefighters, troops and police are already there or on their way.

At least five people died and more than a hundred injured when a hurricane and hailstones the size of tennis balls hit the neighbouring countries.

Seven villages in Moravia suffered. Police with dogs were searching for potentially buried people.

Buildings were smashed to the ground, cars and buses were tossed in to the air and many Linden trees were torn up by the roots. Fires with thick black smoke raged.

“It’s a living hell,” South Moravia’s regional governor, Jan Grolich, said.

The hailstorm also smashed 17^th century windows at the historic castle in Valtice, part of the UNESCO-listed Lednice-Valtice area.

A hospital in the town of Hodonín, on the Czech-Slovak border, said it had treated up to 200 injured people.

The deputy mayor of Hruška in the Břeclav district Marek Babis told Czech TV: “Half of the village was razed to the ground. There are only walls without ceilings and without windows. The church has no roof, no tower, and no place for people to hide. The village from the church down is practically non-existent. The school has no facade or roof. Cutting old linden and spruce trees, it’s madness.”

The last time a tornado hit in the Czech Republic was in 2018.

The governments have promised to provide quick financial aid to the affected people.

#MORAVIA #SLOVAKIA #CZECHREPUBLICA #HURRICANE #HAIL #STORMS

Leigh and Rodney discuss the story of Hurricane Hero Joe Dore and how an alligator town snapped over a mention of Trump! Much, much more as well…join us now

#Trump #LoneStarState #alligator #Hurricanehero #Portugal #Slovakia

Yesterday, when The Society published the moving story of Hurricane hero Joe Dore leaving his job at the local store – a job he had held for 30 years – I only felt it would do good. Maybe help a little man who rescues animals and has helped many people in the town of Winnie in Texas.

I didn’t earn money from this story, never intended to.

However, I am now the lone star in the troubled dark hearts of some people who live there who want me to remove this sentence from the story …

This is the offending statement: “Despite being bisexual – something said to be sneered at by many Trumpists in the Lone Star State – Joe has won massive respect from the residents of Winnie.”

I see it as a fair statement of opinion grown out of years of writing and Broadcasting on The Donald … however, as a writer, journalist and cable TV presenter, it appears I am not allowed to have an opinion, unless that opinion is that Donald Trump is a good and honest man.

There are many in this world who would not agree with that view.

Let’s look back at the summer of 2020 which was, in some ways, somewhere over the rainbow for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in America.

The Supreme Court had came up with a decision giving ‘workplace protections’ for LGBGT people.

This followed the fifth anniversary of the high court’s ruling on marriage equality. 

However, President Trump was silent throughout what could have been a pot of gold for those in America with alternative life-styles. He faced it all with his boy-ly quiff and turned-down mouth, macho and manly. Pin-up boy for those who work with their backs to the sun.

But in that summer, I can find no tweet from Trump about Pride Month, even though aides had apparently said it might be a good idea.

However, I can find the Trump administration sliced a regulation by the Obama administration in 2016 to mandate health care as a civil right for transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act.

Do you know, one thing America has always meant to me, is Democracy. The right to speak your mind out.

No more though, not when those who live with alligators, floods and hurricanes – tough to a man and a woman – decide to stand up to protect one of their own, one who is a bit different from them, and an itinerant writer comes along to praise what they are doing and not to bury the man of their political dreams

This is the offending article:

This is a song about democracy in America, a song by Frank Sinatra first and then by Paul Robeson… the black and the white of the land of the free …

These are the lyrics:

What is America to me?
A name, a map or a flag I see,
A certain word, “Democracy”,
What is America to me?

The house I live in,
The friends that I have found,
The folks beyond the railroad
and the people all around,
The worker and the farmer,
the sailor on the sea,
The men who built this country,
that’s America to me.

The words of old Abe Lincoln,
of Jefferson and Paine,
of Washington and Jackson
and the tasks that still remain.
The little bridge at Concord, 
where Freedom’s Fight began,
of Gettysburg and Midway 
and the story of Bataan.

The house I live in,
my neighbors White and Black,
the people who just came here 
or from generations back,
the town hall and the soapbox,
the torch of Liberty,
a home for all God’s children,
that’s America to me.

The house I live in,
the goodness everywhere,
a land of wealth and beauty 
with enough for all to share.
A house that we call “Freedom”,
the home of Liberty,
but especially the people,
that’s America to me.

But especially the people–that’s 
the true America…

#democracy #USA #winnie #texas #lonestar #joedore #franksinatra #paulrobeson #trump