I'm off to Pandy in South Wales next week, and the increasingly strong-minded attitude of the Welsh Assembly is a matter of great concern to me.
It's just been announced that travellers from England will not be allowed into Wales if they come from the High or Very High Risk Tiers in England - this is referring to the brand-new English system for imposing anti-virus measures in individual Local Authority areas. Thankfully, my part of Sussex is classed as a Medium Risk area, and I should have no trouble while at Pandy. But I can envisage the former toll barriers at both Severn Bridges being brought back into use as Check Points, with travellers being stopped and questioned about their home address and where they are bound. Just asking will take at least a minute or two; and if evidence of residence and destination is required, then the delay could turn into several minutes - with massive traffic queues building up.
I'm well-organised: I can show my driving licence as evidence of my home address, and also the Caravan Club Site booking on my phone - both of them in a twinkling. But many won't have such things to hand. The result could be horrendous delays on the westward M4 and the westward M48.
So I'm thinking I may journey to Pandy using 'the back way' - which is towing the caravan to Gloucester, taking the A40 to Ross-on-Wye, then cutting across to the A465 Hereford-Abergavenny road and following that to Pandy. Pandy is only just inside Wales. This is not normally the fastest way, but just now it might avoid a frustratingly long wait to get through any Severn Bridge bottlenecks.
Once safely inside Wales, I should be OK for all of my eight-night stay there. Even so, I will definitely (for the sake of my own continued good health) avoid the urban areas of South Wales, and keep to the mountains and the border areas. So no visiting The Gower via Swansea, nor my childhood home town Barry, nor Cardiff, nor any further explorations of The Valleys (I wanted to go to Aberfan). If really necessary, I can have a good holiday simply by keeping to Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and southern Shropshire, all of them in England.
It crosses my mind that this coronavirus pandemic has turned Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales into virtually independent nation states, much more than ever before. Each has had a slightly different approach to tackling the virus in their province or country, quite distinct from what has been done in England. It's a chance for their inhabitants to gauge what it might be like if each of these states were truly independent, and how the NI, Scottish or Welsh governments might cope if some other kind of crisis were to arise. I am not suggesting that any of them have so far done badly. But I don't like, for instance, the rather defensive/assertive noises coming from the Welsh Assembly. It looks a lot like muscle-flexing. The tone seems wrong.
How, for instance, are travellers to be 'stopped' entering Wales? What if they can't satisfy staff at those Check Points? Will the Heddlu (Welsh Police) be called in to deal with people who refuse to turn back? What would the police do, given an Assembly mandate to eject English people from areas riddled through and through with virus?
It all sounds rather dystopian. But Wales is not showing a friendly face just now.
I'll be seriously miffed if some ill-natured petty official at Pandy (at a stern roadblock on the A465) says I can't travel further into Wales, even though Pandy is in a low-risk rural spot, and I come from a similarly low-risk rural spot in Sussex, and can prove it. A jobsworth at the tail end of a long tiring journey is all I need.
And I'm not English but Welsh!
My old passport, just expired, which showed Cardiff (the Welsh capital) as my place of birth, has been sent away to the Passport Office. But my driving licence does at least confirm that I was born in Wales, which may help.
But my accent won't. I suspect that no matter what, anybody who looks and sounds English, and lives there, will be sneered at and treated like a leper. Or threatened. I haven't forgotten that awful note left on my car at New Quay in West Wales back in 2014.
Fingers crossed then, but I'm prepared for a less than happy travel experience.
