I was dreading our family half-term trip to Portugal — but it was a breeze
As I scanned the empty airport halls and rows of pointless queue barriers, it appeared that we were one of only a handful of families brave enough to fly abroad this half-term.
We had spent the last few weeks checking travel advice and amassing all the documentation that it seemed our family of four required, and now it was business time. I had wondered many times if this little holiday would be worth it, not least because as my five-year-old daughter was terrified of her pre-departure Covid test. An earlier Covid scare had left her screaming and needing to be held down while my husband and I tried to wiggle a stick up her nostrils.
In the hope of avoiding another meltdown, we booked a PCR test for the three of us (my younger daughter did not need one to enter Portugal as she is under two) at a DAM Health clinic (dam-health.com) in Epping for the day before our Stansted flight. When my daughter whispered "I'm scared" to me, with tears in her eyes, the nice lady who was doing the swabbing smiled and told her that the test would be super quick. We agreed that my daughter would be paid in ice creams for sitting still. Ten ice creams and counting later, I regretted the promise but the trick had worked. Cue one very relieved child and justification for taking the test at a clinic, even though it was more expensive.
All of DAM Health’s clinical tests are administered by a health professional, so “customers know the tests are being conducted correctly,” said Professor Frank Joseph, DAM Health’s medical director. My daughter's test had been free, too, as DAM has a “kids go free” policy, which should cut the costs of testing for larger families, with its Fit to Fly tests starting at £99 outside of London.
The results were due within 24 hours and they were emailed through to us that evening. Going to a clinic as a family, however, had only been possible as we were booked to fly on Sunday. School would have made visiting a clinic impossible prior to a Saturday flight.
At the airport, armed with a thick wadge of printed forms (Fit to Fly test results, passenger locator forms for Portugal, Day 2 test booking codes and receipts) and fully charged phones, Ryanair’s check-in desk wanted to see a print-out of our test results. I said that we had also uploaded those documents to the boarding pass section of the Ryanair website but the staff admitted they were not sure what the point of uploading the documents was. Gone, it seems, are the days of the digital check-in. After putting our bags through they gave us a tiny slip of paper to show staff at the boarding gate, so that we would not need to show our test results again.
With most of Stansted’s shops closed and security completely empty, we flew through the airport, my eldest running the whole way and singing. I allowed myself to think that coming away had been the right choice.
It was the week before we travelled, when we booked all our tests, that we had felt most anxious. This was not helped by the fact that the Government instructions didn’t make sense for families. According to Foreign Office travel advice my five-year-old did not need a test to board her flight back to the UK (these are only required for 11-year-olds and above) but did need a Day 2 test once back in the country, at a cost of around £70 for each of us. Surely it is only logical for her to either have both tests or none at all?
When I asked the Department of Transport why only a Day 2 test was required for her they said: “Due to the potential importation of new strains of Coronavirus, it is important to include all children of school age and above in the higher standard post arrival tests to ensure we identify and contain new variants of concern.”
Our flight was full but the vibe was relaxed, with only a handful of families on board. I still had a nagging worry though that we would arrive to find out we had filled in a code, a date or a passport number wrong on the Passenger Locator Form.
When we touched down in Porto, a smiling man accepted our locator forms without question but he also wanted to see our Fit to Fly test results. When I struggled to find them at the bottom of my bag he just waved us through.
All in all, we were out of Arrivals and in the queue for the hire car within about 20 minutes. We could hardly believe it, but 45 minutes later we were putting the kids to bed and then nipping out to watch the sun set over Porto from our hotel balcony.
The headache of trying to understand the requirements for travel, the few Green List countries and the extra cost of all the tests seems to have put a great many families off travelling this half-term. But I can honestly say that this was one of the quickest airport transits we’ve made as a family. Our tests have cost £450 (Fit to Fly and Day 2) so far and we still have two adult tests to book in Portugal before we return (the Government provides a rather daunting list of clinics to contact). But I’m finally relaxing with my Douro red. Assuming no hiccups on the way home, this long-awaited break will have been worth it.
Read more: What to do about your holiday to Portugal as country moves from green to amber list
