Borders Closing on our Return to Nerja

Ju and I are back in our motorhome Zagan, parked besides fruit trees and under a blue sky at Nerja on the far eastern end of the Costa del Sol. We arrived yesterday a few hours before Spain announced it will close its borders to anyone arriving from the UK, other than Spanish nationals and returning residents, from today. It’s not clear how long Spain’s border (and those of other countries in Europe and around the world) will remain closed for while the world assesses the impact of a new faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus prevalent in the UK.

Rewinding a Bit

Going back in time a few weeks, we decided in the autumn to head down to the campsite here in Nerja and stay for a few months, arriving at the end of October, just before Spanish autonomous communities closed their borders to one another. We’d stayed at the site for a month in February of this year and knew something about it and the area, enough to know we’d be happy here. The site had been full then, but was eerily quiet when we arrived, with just a handful of travellers staying long-term. The site is family-owned (and they’re very nice), and they live on-site.

The following week I headed to a dentist in Nerja after a piece of my tooth snapped off, more nervous about not wanting to be close to people than the possibility of the dreaded drill. The result was I needed 5 or 6 visits for root canal treatment and a crown to be fitted. I’d got the first appointment booked in when the news came from home that mum had had a stroke and was seriously ill in hospital. The phone call we’ve dreaded during our years of travel, a sudden reality.

The worst week in my life followed. Dad couldn’t be in the hospital with mum as he has COPD and the staff there were very clear he couldn’t go, the risk to him if he caught COVID-19 was too high. The result was he got news in fragments over the phone once a day, and relayed it to us, my sister and mum’s brother. The waiting each day was awful, and the news gradually got worse, like a series of emotional blows to each of us. It eventually became clear that mum wasn’t going to survive.

On the way down here we could hear a noise coming from one of the front wheels – a rhythmic whining – not so loud or obvious that we’d stop and find a garage but enough for us to know something’s wrong. The wheel bearings have failed a number of times on that side and they could be the cause, or maybe not. Ju had booked a mechanic to come and look at it but after it became clear mum wouldn’t survive, and after a number of no-shows from the mechanic, we decided to fly home instead.

Unsure if dentists at home would treat me I got the root canal treatment done and a temporary filling. The crown would take at least 10 days to make, so the dentist put in a permanent filling for me and instructed me not to eat anything hard on that side, which is the situation I’m in now. I’ll contact them today and get the final couple of appointments lined up, so I can eat nuts again without fear of snapping my molar in two.

One day amongst the mechanic and dentist appointments my sister called and I could tell from her voice what the news was going to be. Mum had died. Given the extent of damage to her brain, the only other possibility would have been a life in a serious disabled state, and mum had already made it clear that she didn’t ever want that to happen. She had even placed a do not resuscitate notice on her file to try stop it. To be honest I’d no idea how to process the information I’d been given, I still don’t. Thankfully Ju was still operating and sorted storage of the van at the site here, a taxi to Malaga airport, a flight home and a lift from a friend back to the Cooler.

We spent our two weeks of quarantine talking as much as we could with dad, the reality of not being able to hug or even stand near loved ones during this pandemic striking cruelly home for all of us. Mum had already paid for her funeral and, thankfully, agreed much of the detail around the songs she wanted, the fact she wanted to wear her wedding ring and that she wanted to be cremated. All of these tiny details would have been added agony without knowing her wishes. By our second week in quarantine we were both feeling lethargic and Ju developed a cough, once she’d reported her symptoms on the COVID-19 tracker app we were both asked to be tested. The results came back negative, the cough most likely down to the wood burner drying the air out in our 4m by 6m space that we’d been confined as, unlike our March quarantine, the weather wasn’t nice enough to go sit in our yard.

The funeral took place a few days after our quarantine ended, so we kept our distance from everyone in that time and were able to sit with dad and even hug him at the funeral, the sudden touch a highly emotional moment in itself. We were still sick with worry the tests might both have been wrong, but we hadn’t been near people for 18 days and the strength of emotion overrode the fear. The day of the funeral was, as anyone who’s been through will attest I guess, a kind of personal horror. I won’t go into details, there is no need.

Deciding to Return to Spain

We’d decided we probably wanted to return to Spain before we left, so were more comfortable about leaving the van here uninsured on a campsite for a few weeks or months. We knew that would mean leaving dad, and that’s been a tug-of-war of emotion for me. Dad’s thankfully able to live completely independently, driving, cooking and baking, sorting finances and so on, so in terms of personal care he’s fine. Emotionally he’s just taken a hammer blow. He’s tough, but is able to talk about his emotions, so we’ve had some frank conversations which left me feeling just about OK enough to come back here for a while.

It’s not just dad and I in this of course, there’s Ju too and her parents, and our wider families, and our trying to assess what’s the best for our collective mental and physical wellbeing has been nigh-on impossible. Christmas has made these kinds of decision more difficult for all – do we go to see loved ones f we’re legally allowed to? Would we be comfortable sat inside thinking we might be infecting them without knowing it? For us the answer was no, but I just want to say this: these decisions are very personal ones, and everyone has the right to use their own judgement. Some will say we were wrong to travel back to Spain but again these are deeply personal choices and, in my opinion, few of us understand enough about the emotional, physical and financial state of others to make sweeping moral judgements about them.

We didn’t know whether we’d actually be able to legally get back here. When we left, Andalusia had closed the borders between towns. We were able to drive to the airport in Malaga on the basis we were going home, but not return. The UK was also in the second lockdown, so we couldn’t return to the airport there either. We needed UK law to allow us to travel to East Midlands Airport, 20 mins from our house, and for Spain to allow us to drive 45 mins from Malaga to Nerja. As Christmas got closer we hoped a window might open up to allow that to happen, which would close again as soon as Christmas was over, so we booked a flight for 21 Dec.

PCR Tests, Tier 4 and Border Closures

In the final week things were starting to align. Spain had mandated all arrivals needed negative PCR tests (or a TMA test, which we couldn’t for the life of us work out whether we could get in the UK – it now seems a UK LAMP test is acceptable). The swab had to be taken within 72 hours of arriving in Spain, and with pre-Xmas delays to mail we had to be careful to get the results back in time. We opted for The Midnight Pharmacy 5 miles away in Nottingham, where we could pick up the test a few days before and drop them off any day before 2pm to get results by 11pm the following day. The tests were £150 each, reduced to £135 by a 10% discount, far more expensive than the flight and worthless if we didn’t do them properly.

After a hairloss-inducing few hours of email refresh the results came back as negative for both of us, we hugged and celebrated. A short while later Boris appeared on the TV and gave the news that a new form of the virus was causing the south-east and ‘the east of England’ to go into a new Tier 4, with no international travel allowed. Thankfully it was only a few minutes before we were able to establish that Nottinghamshire was staying in Tier 3 (East Midlands isn’t the East of England) so we could still legally go to the airport, but they were a very, very long few minutes.

Not long after the announcement from Downing Street border closures started, as countries reacted to this new mainly UK-based threat, halting flights, trains and ferry traffic to many European and other destinations. Spain didn’t immediately close their border and throughout Sunday we watched as country after country were temporarily closed off, some for a couple of days, some for a couple of weeks. Eventually Spain said they were waiting for an EU-wide meeting on Monday at 11am UK time – 45 minutes after our flight would land in Malaga. That seemed to seal it, we’d still be able to fly and get into the country, probably. I don’t think either of us got more than a couple of hours sleep that night.

Flying Back to Spain

After spending months standing back from anyone we happen to pass and doing next to no socialising, being up close with people has become a disjointing, uncomfortable experience. The airports themselves are almost empty at the moment, but when it comes to queuing for security or boarding, no-one was keeping to the 2m rule. The flight back to the UK in November was perhaps 1/3 full, and the one back to Spain 2/3 full, so there’s no chance of being distant from folks for the 3 hours or so we’re sat in the plane, but at least on our flight back to Spain we knew everyone on board has had a negative covid test in the previous days. Like with this whole thing, it’s impossible for us to really understand the risks of going to the supermarket, going for a run with someone else, sitting on a plane or in a taxi. That doesn’t stop our brains spinning all day and night though, and we got little sleep in the week before coming back. I slept for an hour on Sunday night, the rest of the time staring at the dark ceiling, trying to calm my mind, feeling my heart beating too quickly.

At East Midlands airport the staff checked we’d completed our Spain Travel Health declaration had had our QR codes. They didn’t ask to see the PCR fit to fly certificates, but they asked one chap who’d not got his QR code whether he’d done his PCR and in a confused state (English wasn’t his first language) he said no. It turned out he did have the PCR test, but he’d done it a day too early so wasn’t allowed to fly.

The flight was fine, we were sat separately as RyanAir deliberately assign seats randomly and then charge you if you want to change seats and sit next to each other. As we’ve spent nearly every day together for the past 9 years, we were OK to be sat apart for 3 hours. We got lucky and had no-one next to us. I wondered why all these people were flying during such a tumultuous time, but didn’t actually talk to anyone to ask. Ju chatted with a chap who was paid to come over and drive a lorry full of luxury cars back to the UK. A guy in his 20s relayed to his neighbours how he wrote computer code and could work anywhere, and preferred being in Spain for the winter months. One lady said she normally did the trip to the UK and back every two weeks, but I didn’t hear why.

Eventually, as we flew over Cordoba, the cloud gave way and we’d beautiful views of the rugged Andalucian hills and mountains below, tiny villas and lorries just visible, the sun bright on endless dots of olive trees. The plane headed out to sea over Malaga, turning back inland to approach the runway and giving us great views over to the Sierra Nevada, snow-capped and, we’ve since read, the ski resort up there is open for business.

Once we’d landed and had streamed off the plane, we still half expected to be told the border had closed and we’d be sent home – Portugal had closed to non-residents half an hour before we boarded. Ju hooked her phone up to the airport WiFi and checked the news, nothing about Spain. We queued for passport control and then for the health screening process. When we flew back to East Midlands a few weeks ago we weren’t screened at all, just a few people had their track and track declaration checked before the staff stopped and just let the rest of us through. The experience in Malaga was very different, with ranks of heat sensitive cameras, staff with bar code scanners and computers, checking everyone’s PCR test certificate and tracing information. Afterwards we got messages in English advising who to call if we got symptoms. On the other hand, there is no requirement to quarantine here, and I’ve no idea which process works best.

Finally through the checks we still didn’t relax until we were out the building, where a Spanish camera crew tried to interview Ju but in Spanish, so gave up and tried to find another Brit they could get a sound bite from. Clearly we were newsworthy, and everyone expected the borders to be closed soon enough. One of the kind folks who’ve been on the campsite for a few months picked us up from the airport and in between chatting about them, their families and news from Nerja we stared out at the landscape around us, the adrenaline starting to ease off.

Back at Aula de Naturaleza, Mai, the lady campsite owner, was a tad surprised to see us, although Ju had emailed a few days ago to let her know we were coming back. I’d expected to be turned away from the site but once her daughter had used a remote sensor to check our temperatures she welcomed us back, saying we were very lucky as the border would close soon. We walked over to the corner where they store vans, knowing Zagan would be OK from the outside as others on the site had checked for us and sent updates to Ju while we were home (they’re a great bunch, motorhome travellers). The voices in my head (why do we self-sabotage ourselves so much I wonder?) had imagined rats had made their way inside though, attracted by the food we’d left, so it was yet another relief when we opened the door and all was fine. And another when the van started. And another when our old pitch was still empty. And another when the water pump still worked (I’d drained the system and had a nagging doubt I’d left the taps open and the 12V still switched on, which would burn the pump out – clearly I hadn’t).

What’s Next

Who knows? The control we like to imagine we have in life is, it’s very clear at the moment, just imagined. Loved ones get ill and die. Governments have control over many aspects of life, not individuals. Viruses run amok. Yes, we can and should plan, but no, we cannot be sure what will happen tomorrow.

Our hope is this: we’ll stay here until some time in March. In the meantime the vaccination programme will hopefully have made its way to our parents, they’ll be much better protected and the worst of the winter period will be over. We’ll come back to the UK before our 90 day Schengen visa-free period ends and then decide what to do next. That’s about as far as we dare think ahead at the moment.

Wrapping Up

We slept for 11 hours last night. The stars shone in clear skies and even the dogs in the area around us were quiet, a rarity around rural villas in Spain. This morning the sun poured in through our window. We ate breakfast and walked to a nearby stall to stock up on fruit and veg, admiring the flowers, exotic plants and trees on the site as we passed, saying ‘¡hola!’ to the talking parrot which lives by reception. Ju’s stocked up on avocados from the site, and has set off for a run to the Balcón de Europa. I’ll finish this post, then head out into the sun with a coffee, I’ll run later this evening and sort out in my head some ideas for things to aim for over the next couple of months.

Cheers, Jay