Finally cancelled my UK/Wales/Ireland Trip. So sad.
 

Yes, I waited. And I waited. But reality smacked me in the face, even though I did my best to ignore the facts.

Fact: The Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival was cancelled. That was the start of our trip
Fact: FLYBE is no more. That was our transport to Ireland from Wales.
Fact: My husband and I are "elderly"--ages 75 and almost 67. We are part of the "culling of the herd" set.
Fact: Our early June to early July itinerary was just a tad too early in the COVID cycle to predict how things will go.

I feel as though I let the troops down. And the idea we might never get to sing and drink in an Irish pub again is killer. But we certainly have put in enough time in the past, and for that, we are eternally grateful.
I'm sure our girls and their families will toast to us in the future.
AZ

An unfortunate choice of words, and obviously not the real killer. At risk of offending, don't take it personally, trip cancellation threads are simply tedious at this point. NONE of us are traveling, EVERYONE who planned a trip in the forseeable future is cancelling. So what? Oops, real life, even for we lucky people who'd forgotten what that could be. Killer.

As you know, MmePerdu, no one can force you to read tedious threads with the word "cancelled" in the title. :)

^^^"But we certainly have put in enough time in the past, and for that, we are eternally grateful."

This is key and something most of us are probably thinking right now ==
I am so thankful for every trip we didn't have to cancel:gstar:

AZ, I understand your disappointment! We had to cancel a trip to France for April 2020. In fact, we were supposed to be in France right now visiting our daughter and her family, and then meeting up with friends to sightsee in Provence and the French Riviera. Obviously, you and I and everyone else who had to cancel a trip realize how lucky we are to be alive and healthy. But sometimes we just need to vent and to have someone to commiserate with.

And to people who find these kinds of posts tedious, then please don't read them, as AZ says!

To AZ, if you and your husband are healthy, you are still young enough to visit Ireland again. So don't give up!

If we don't read them, how will we know you've told us not to read them?

the idea we might never get to sing and drink in an Irish pub again

Ah come on, I wouldn't be so down about it. Seems a little over dramatic. Yes everyone is cancelling trips this year. But a couple years out? Who knows, you might well be back doing this exact trip you have planned in 2022 or so.

And no I don't mind reading a new thread from every single person who is disappointed about the trip they didn't get to take and wants to talk about it (that's me from Seattle to Mexico last month, boohoo).

And stating the extremely obvious, kind of the only thing we've got to post about on a TRAVEL forum right now. Thank you.

I feel somewhat of what you are feeling. I had planned what I knew didn't feel right a "last trip" for my mom. We had such a perfect trip to Scotland last year and thought it was calling us back. I mean after all, we got a flight voucher due to technical issues and a very small discount on a future stay at the flat we rent, I said we have to go back. Well as the planning started, things were going a stray to then have to cancel due to the virus.

My mom might not be able to go next year. Her legs are slowing her down as time goes on. I told her, we just don't know what a year will bring but the next trip will be perfect like the last one. Fact is, there might not be one for next year but I'm not saying it only we shall see.

We are waiting to cancel our flights but have pulled the trigger on all reservations. I am a little worried that eurostar only gives you to March for the voucher. I am all for winter travel so will see if we get to use them.

I am waiting to see who comes out unscathed by this. KLM and AirFrance were given Gov funds today but Branson hasn't. We have a flight on Virgin and AF.
Flybe was the first to go I think.
You all will go again. We were talking about how many years left we still have for these trips. Peg is my inspiration. I think my husband needs his back surgery as he is finding walking painful.
We are 65 and 66 so know how you feel. My friends were talking yesterday and Ireland is where we all want to go with Wales for next trip. They have been hit with furloughs and are tapping out the travel funds.

I watched a travel show last night on the smugglers in Cornwall. Falmouth is beautiful. I have found Amazon prime has some great travel shows. Tony Richardson walks the coast or something. Will have to do till we get back on the road. I was so looking forward to that trip report. We watched a narrow boat show and that was like watching paint dry. Not for me.

Sassy, Don't give up. I am a speed walker but my husband is slow as molasses and he is in a lot of pain. I have had to work around it the last couple of trips. He is happy to sleep in or sit in a pub while I take off. I get up early and walk or let him sit in a church while I walk around looking at everything. I try and let him set the pace. I think you can get a folding walker or wheelchair and push her. My joke with my husband is I will push him before we stop. If it is something he really likes he pushes through. Surgery as soon as we are able to schedule and hoping this is behind us. Epidurals have not worked. He would never get a cab but now does. I get places closer to train stations now and shorter walks to eat. The hills are tough in Scotland.

Sorry it’s happened to you... but yup it’s happening to us all. I was due to fly out next week for seven weeks but it ain’t happening. Let’s hope next year will come good for us.

bummer is all we can say, and at least we’re alive to write about our cancelled trips unlike some other poor people.

We stand a chance of trying again...

Schnauzer you got that right. I could use a do over in planning..

Macross I was all set to use a taxi service this time. The nice gentleman who took me to the airport said he'd pick us up anytime. I want to see if that's true.

AZ, sad for you. I agree, it’s kind of nice to commiserate together. I mean, it’s a travel forum, we love travel.
We share the highs and lows. Fingers crossed we all get to resume travel plans soon.
Unplanning threads not nearly as much fun as planning threads...

And it doesn’t diminish the real pain others are going through.

I’m so glad I had a wonderful trip with my elderly mother last year, I know we are lucky in many ways.

Cancelling our trip for June not quite completed yet, as I can’t rebook flights. Then one wonders, what are the chances of that not being realistic.

Macross, it's Tony Robinson, ex Blackadder, for those who want to find it. He's done quite a few travel things, including train journeys round the world and of course the Time Team archaeological stuff. We've watched quite a few of them on TV here at the moment. Called Coast to Coast I think.

Thank you, He is very good and love the places he goes. I am exploring more of his shows now that we found him on Amazon. We have to do armchair travel now that we are all at home for a while. I will look at the Time Team show.

I just read where the EU must give refunds now.

AZ, did you have to eat the flybe flight?

It was nice to know that most of you feel that "pang" with the same feeling that one has been so very lucky to have had adventures. "Bittersweet" would be an apt description of our feelings.

For those of you planning "perfect" trips for yourselves or loved ones, I so feel for you. Years ago, I was planning a surprise trip to Galway for my parents when my father made a fatal medical decision. At least my mother and father never knew what they lost in that trip. My father never knew that he would have fallen in love with the first fiddle busker he encountered, and that thought alone buffered my sadness for that cancelled trip.

I assure you that my own pity party for this cancelled trip was short. I felt compelled to copy the example my daughter set when she had to cancel her early April 2020 wedding and her carefully planned, adventure-filled honeymoon*--I allotted myself only a limited time to feel bad.

Unlike her, though, I could refuse to deal with a glaring, inevitable decision until it was time to cancel or lose all funds. Unlike her, denial was darn easy for me because only my husband and I are impacted. You know, the Sea Shanty cancellation and FLYBE collapse were pretty "in our faces" early on but heck...

Cancelling itself wasn't hard, because at least actions require positive energy. When I finished the cancellations, that's when I had my "Oh crap" moment, and I came here to lament because so many of you had always been my resources in travel, and so many of you were involved in this specific trip. You guys, more than anyone, understand the lovely quote by Vivian Swift...

“Anticipation. In love and travel, getting there is half the fun. The lustful impatience, the passionate daydreams, the nerve-wracking waiting... lovers and travelers are all alike when they find themselves on the brink of a new adventure.”

I have TREASURED my online life with so many of you. I am very blessed to have nearby friends who share my love of literature and my passionate belief in education, but this forum shares as much as does my immediate family of the love of "hitting the road".
I am so grateful for your guidance, your experience, and your sense of adventure. Love to all of you who have advised me.

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*Yep, I know some of you want to know what happened to the wedding (the ones that could give a crap or could even make fun of it are pretty obvious by the posts above :) ).

My daughter was in a position to see how this was all going to go early on. But as she said, no matter how much SHE knew, it was just so hard to convince other people how bad it would be. Yes, she told her vendors how horrendous it would be, but they did not believe her until one day, they "got it." Heck, even I did not understand why she was doing a melt-down in February on the phone when I said I was flying to her city (not NY or Boston--there were only a few COVID cases in some outlying county in her city then) to keep a hair appointment because this sweet hairdresser would be guaranteed to do my hair right in the coming weeks for the wedding. My daughter sobbed and sobbed.

I cancelled the flight at the last minute. And just then, and only then, my husband and I finally started processing. My friend circle has reported the same lack of understanding to understanding cycle. We are old, we've "been there, done that", how bad could this really be? And you get to the place where you say, "Oh crap! This is BAD!" And then you just deal, and you do it quickly.

That evening and the next, we visited our two favorite restaurants, ones we regularly visited every darn week, bringing Clorox wipes to clean our seats,etc--yep that raised eyebrows--and told the bartenders we would be disappearing for the unforeseeable future. They were stunned, because COVID had yet to have a documented case in our city. And yes, we worry to death about these restaurant peeps. Please look up VIRTUAL TIP JARS. Most of our servers were putting themselves through college or taking care of elderly parents or are in other straits. Congress is NOT taking care of them. FOOD BANKS ARE ULTRA IMPORTANT.

My husband reported to work the next morning before dawn to pack up essentials, much to the surprise of his fellow office associates, and that has been it. I created at an-home apartment office for him in the master bedroom (good reason to always keep folding tables and chairs). We are now official hermits living in a not-at-all cramped apartment in a 20-unit apartment building with a wide age range. Thank God it's not a Senior Citizen facility, although it does lean heavily 65 and above. We had our first "foot first" exit last week, but he is still alive (barely). This crusty resident had loudly scoffed at our wiping down all shared surfaces because his "wealth advisor" told him this was all no more than the flu.

I digress. Back to the wedding...

My poor daughter had to wait to cancel her wedding until her vendors finally understood the situation and until all airlines "got it" so that her guests could get refunds or ecredits. As she said, the waiting to pull the trigger was horrendous; making the cancellations/rescheduling etc was actually a relief. Only then could she put aside her feelings until the now-cancelled/ maybe rescheduled wedding day. On her now destroyed wedding day, she and her fiance drank themselves into a stupor and binge-ate sugar and fat, finally freeing themselves of a pre-wedding diets. Now they just get on with life, and they are just lovely.

All in all, she and her fiance have been through far worse life-and-death shared experiences; our combined families have bonded tightly without a wedding because of those. And...WE ALL HAD PARIS TOGETHER!

We are indeed blessed.

With affection and so much appreciation of understanding,
AZ

Yes, it helps when you have someone to commiserate with, doesn’t it? We were scheduled to fly to London a week from today, and later Barcelona after 10 days, I was so looking forward to it. But of course we cancelled, luckily we have vouchers for our flights and the rest was refundable.

I believe we should count our blessings. Most of us are in good health, well able to weather this storm and wait it out. Travel awaits us in the future, next summer perhaps?

For those of you who have slowed down and find it hard to walk, I strongly urge you to consider a wheelchair. Our mom loved to travel and in later years her collapsible wheelchair was a boon. We took her on a family vacation every year and she enjoyed every moment. She passed on peacefully days after our last vacation was to Alaska in July 2019.

So as Macross has asked, what are we out? In the scope of things, nothing more than what travel insurance would have cost. I only would get travel insurance when my parents were alive, because one just never knew. We've been just throwing caution to the wind for the past few years.

1) Overseas transport. Delta has given us e-credits. Delta staff has been lovely, and we think that airline will survive so we could probably use some of the credits. The actual loss is the future cost of repeating the flight--we had a sweet Business Class deal with direct routing that probably will not surface again. Done and dusted. Can't look back. Over it
2) Hotels. All refunded.
3) Apartment rental in Bristol. 795 British pounds gone. No possible refund--knew it going in.
4) Pre-booked tours. All refunded. Paid more to get refundable tours.
5) FLYBE No refunds for a belly-up company. 150 British pounds gone. Not horrendous.
6) St David's Men's Choir Concert. Probably around 70 British pounds gone. If they eventually cancel the concert, we might get some money back.

All in all, we got off lightly. We would have spent oodles of money on the ground if we had gone. In my mind, I think I still held out hope things would change, and I'd just do a workaround. When Delta had to change the routing (understandable) that would involve multiple legs, I knew it was time to pull the trigger.

Again, financial losses were all in all minimal. I feel bad for others.

I am so sorry about your travel plans AND your daughter's wedding being cancelled. Those are two huge blows. I do hope you can reschedule both soon. This is the perfect place to come and vent and I'm sorry you've received any grief.

KTtravel--Your comment was sweet and much appreciated. As to the negative posts--I immediately knew those comments said much more about the posters themselves than they ever could about me. Not taken to heart one bit.

The Bristol apartment. Yikes. They would not give you a voucher even? We got 75% back for our Berlin apartment. Reminds me to send an email back to our London accommodation. They want us to rebook not cancel. I don't have a crystal ball and now want to go to Cornwall instead.


Weddings. We have a blueberry farm on our quiet road that turned into a wedding venue much to out neighborhoods dismay. 200 plus people and vendors three days a week but did feel for all those people. I don't know what they will all do. They were booked for a year out. Are they going to pick another date or wait it out? I looked at jet blue flights for July. 45 each way to Albany. Hmmm, tempting.

I feel your pain. We have an upcoming September trip to Portugal that I have been planning (over-planning) for the past two years. Odds are not good that it will take place this autumn. The only ones happy about that are the corgis. (:

The corgis are happy. So is my Boxer. He likes where he goes but this was going to be a long trip and I was feeling a little bad for him.

AlessandraZoe, I can certainly sympathize. We're likely cancelling our July trip to Budapest/Helsinki/Norwegian fjords/Copenhagen. I'm basically waiting to understand the flight cancellation process. We now have to look forward to future trips and memories to be made.

And for those saying the "we're cancelling our trip" threads are tedious I've got two thoughts for you: 1) I've got a simple solution - move on and don't read the thread, not sure why that's too complicated for you to figure out 2) reading about others having to deal with the same disappointment you're dealing with is comforting for many of us.

AlessandraZoe, Can't you claim via your credit card for the Bristol apartment and the FLYBE flights? I'm assuming that you must have booked online?

Rubicand--How thoughtful! I shall check, even though I think recouping any losses are not in my future.

The FLYBE flights were booked in November, and I believe credit card coverage works within a 90-day period. But I shall check. I am assuming one can't get blood from a stone (FLYBE) though. Bankrupt is bankrupt. We were lucky in that we had booked only one-way flights. Funny thing is that even without the virus, one always worried about FLYBE lasting until one flew it!

What we signed with the apartment was unusual--it was full freight up front at the time of booking, even though the actual booking was through Booking.com. My husband and I debated the terms of that stay for three days, but then we said, "Heck, let's just go for it." So while I wish the place would have been more generous in the circumstances, we knew we were chancing a loss the minute we booked. The booking was made less than 90 days ago, however, so maybe...

The money loss does not upset us. Again, I knew had a good idea of what would be spending once there. We are saving a lot of money by NOT going to UK/Ireland for three weeks. No, the only sadness was not LIVING those three weeks in the UK and Ireland.

Hence, my delay in pulling the trigger. I was sort of hoping in my mind that a) restrictions would be lifted by our stay there in mid-June and b) we would feel comfortable being trapped in an airline with potential infection so that I could do some brilliant rerouting.

Flying is, of course, the bigger issue now with our ages. When our direct routing to London changed to two legs each way (actually, now that I think about it, it would have been THREE legs each way because I had yet to book our flight TO the departure city), then one is adding more potential layovers, cramped boarding areas, bad restrooms, etc to the mix.
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Macross, I'm laughing. I was booking the Cork area because of your last travel; now you have been looking at mine. And in the meantime, I now want to see the Shetland Islands and Berwick-on-Tweed* because my husband and I have been binge-watching "Vera" and "Shetland" (Acorn/BritBox be us.). Every time they are in a pub dancing to Trad on Shetland, I see my husband's eyes tearing up. My husband put his foot down on "Poldark" by the first episode in Season Three because, as he put it, "Sorry, I just can't watch Poldark ride across the horizon ten times per episode again." I had to agree. I had read all the "Poldark" books so that was no big deal to me.

"Hinterland" is next on the "binge-watch" tour of England. I'm sure that will keep Wales in our minds.

*I'm sure people are thinking, "Berwick-on -Tweed? What?" Until 1998, the only trip I had taken across the Atlantic was 3 weeks stuck in a Ford Escort with my family in around 1969. My sister and I were moping teenagers. We used Frommer's "England on $10 a Day". With that budget, our B&Bs were certainly not upscale. The worst one was one with a chamberpot outside of Blackpool. The best one was in Berwick-on-Tweed. We had arrived after dark and had no concept of where we were. My sister and I had a room to ourselves (unusual on this trip). After a night's sleep, we woke up to singing birds and streaming sunshine. We opened our room windows to see a lovely garden below and a shining sea beyond. It's one of our most glorious shared memories.

Hinterland is sort of dark. They said they filmed mostly in winter and fall to keep it dark. I still think Wales is beautiful. The Coastal walk show are great.

Booking.com I am sort of over them. We booked a place with them in Germany but then we started getting three page contracts in German to sign from owners of flat. They also wanted us to purchase or rent towels and sheets. Then they wanted a bank draft for half the money. It took me three hours with Booking.com to cancel. I went to Airbnb and got another flat. I am sure they would have not given back the deposit with the COVID`19. I use them as a guide now and then go directly to hotel or flat.