How SNP politics is putting some Scots’ holidays in sun on hold – Susan Dalgety

A trip to Paris at the age of 13 left Susan Dalgety with a life-long wanderlust, but her travel plans are being frustrated by home bird Nicola Sturgeon’s latest spat with Westminster.
Susan Dalgety was inspired to travel the world after visiting Paris at the age of 13 (Picture: iStockphoto/Getty Images)Susan Dalgety was inspired to travel the world after visiting Paris at the age of 13 (Picture: iStockphoto/Getty Images)
Susan Dalgety was inspired to travel the world after visiting Paris at the age of 13 (Picture: iStockphoto/Getty Images)

An old school friend sent me a faded photograph a few days ago. It’s happy holiday snap of a dozen young girls on a school trip to France.

And there, peeking out from behind a local shopkeeper’s daughter, is my 13-year-old self, as introverted as I remember, but as curious as I still am today.

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The photograph is the only evidence I have of a holiday that changed my life.

Every two years, our rural school offered a trip to Paris. The cost – £32 if I remember correctly – was five times my ploughman father’s weekly wage, and way beyond our family’s means. But my mother was determined I should go, and had saved for years so that I could experience life abroad.

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The memories she gave me still shape my life today, as iconic images from my beloved set of encyclopaedia came to life. I saw the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, climbed the Eiffel Tower, had a prix fixe lunch in a Parisian bistro, and visited Versailles and Fontainebleau.

I tasted real coffee for the first time, which kickstarted my lifelong love affair with the bean. My mouth still waters remembering the warm, buttery croissants, slathered in home-made apricot jam for breakfast. Apricots! I was a child brought up on seasonal rhubarb and apples.

And I will never forget the shock on people’s faces when they cut into their burgers one evening. The shrieks of “Miss, miss, the hamburger is raw, I cannae eat raw mince, miss!” still make me laugh.

It was to be nearly another 20 years before I was to travel abroad again.

As a teenage mum, my priorities changed, but I never lost my wanderlust. I had seen Paris as a 13-year-old girl, and it made me want to see the world.

And through a combination of good luck, careful planning and a cavalier attitude towards money, I have been lucky enough to see large parts of it, from the Forbidden City in Beijing to Monument Valley in Utah.

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My heart still soars every time I see the Parthenon in Athens or the Manhattan skyline. I adore Brighton beach. And there is nowhere in the world quite like the shores of Lake Malawi, at the bottom of the Rift Valley, where human beings first walked.

Travel is now as central to my life as my grandchildren, which is why I have found lockdown increasingly difficult.

The enforced stasis and the feeling of existential doom that pervades every aspect of our lives, from shopping in a sweaty mask to fear of economic meltdown, has only been bearable by the promise of travel sometime soon.

And as the risk of infection has started to recede, I have waited with bated breath for permission from Ms Sturgeon to take to the road again.

My finger hovers over the Eurotunnel website, desperate to click on ‘Tickets and Fares’. Our campervan sits ready, with fresh cushions and an up-to-date MOT. My European Health Insurance Card is still valid.

But like thousands of other Scots, I held off, desperately hoping that our holidays would not be held ransom by a politician stubbornly determined to show Scotland can do things differently, even when there is no need.

It seems we may have to wait a bit longer because while our English neighbours – and family – can travel freely to around 60 countries from today, we Scots cannot.

A row between Westminster and the Scottish Government over which countries should be included on the travel list means that our holiday plans remain on hold.

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This latest tiff may satisfy Ms Sturgeon’s basic instinct to frame every aspect of the pandemic as a political opportunity for nationalism, but it is hurting thousands of Scottish families.

July is Scotland’s traditional holiday month. Edinburgh’s trades holidays started yesterday; Glasgow Fair begins in two weeks. The virus and the EIS willing, schools will re-open on 11 August. There is a four-week window for most Scots to catch some sun and Ms Sturgeon seems determined to keep it firmly closed.

She may have sanctioned the opening of self-catering holiday homes in Scotland from yesterday, but a quick trawl of travel sites suggest that most are either booked up or eye-wateringly expensive, though the midges and persistent rain do come at no extra cost.

An affordable package to an all-inclusive hotel in Majorca or a Brittany campsite may not seem a priority during a pandemic, but to many, the prospect of seven days in the sun was the only thing that kept them going during the darkest days of lockdown.

Even a break in the Lake District or the Yorkshire Dales – where the summer weather can be as miserable as it is in Scotland – is discouraged.

As my son packed his children and their tents into the family car yesterday for a week in Keswick – on a safe, socially distanced campsite – he joked that he may not be allowed back over the border at the end of his holiday.

“But we have to get away,” he grimaced. “We have spent more than three months in our house, three months...”

And my sister, who works in the NHS and has spent the last three-and-a-half months fighting the virus, messages me in despair from her home in Dumfries.

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“We have booked a campsite in Haltwhistle for next week,” she wails. “And now I can’t even go to Castle Douglas.” Nicola Sturgeon is famously a home bird. Travel is, for her, a business necessity. It is said she has to be persuaded to take an occasional break in a family timeshare in Portugal, and it is hard to imagine her on a sunbed, slathered in factor 30, sipping on a Cosmopolitan.

But most people do not share her antipathy to a well-earned break. Their annual holiday is a precious time, an opportunity to throw off the shackles of routine, to try new things, or revel in old favourites. It is the hot sun on grey skin, salty sand in warm sandwiches, cold beer and chilled wine.

And sometimes, like for that 13-year-old on her first trip abroad, a holiday will create memories that will enrich a lifetime.

We have given up much to fight coronavirus, and there will be many more sacrifices ahead.

Even those of us who do not agree with Ms Sturgeon’s ideology have done as she has told us, like obedient children wary of a tight-lipped schoolteacher.

As a reward, she could have at least have given us our July holidays.

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