Coronavirus has ended my 50-month travel streak

Standing in the snow in January 2016 at Oslo Harbour as my streak of 50 consecutive months of travel commenced.

We stepped foot off the plane at Moss Airport in Rygge – a village 60 kilometres outside of Oslo. We – my then girlfriend and I – were visiting the Norwegian capital for a city break, and the start to the trip was certainly eye catching.

We made our way down the steps and onto a white-covered apron, the January snow now crunching under foot with the terminal just steps away.

It was the first time either of us had been to Scandinavia and, unbeknownst to me at the time, this trip that was kicking off 2016 for us would start a streak of 50 consecutive months of travel. That is, leaving Great Britain at least once a month, each month, from January 2016 to February 2020, inclusive.

Then Coronavirus happened.

Yes, it’s been rumbling on in China since November, but it only became any kind of legitimate problem in the UK at the beginning of March.

In a recent blog post, I wrote that COVID-19 caused our trip to Rome to be cancelled. First doubt was cast on the trip, then Ryanair cancelled our outbound flight. I tried searching for alternatives, but any plan B was destroyed when Italy went into lockdown and, thus, the dominos started to fall.

A picture taken shortly after landing in Moss Airport, Rygge, which has since shut down.

We tried to book a restaurant for a meal, and had plans to go to the cinema instead of the Colosseum. But at its ruthless best, the Coronavirus tore through our plans and resigned us to a takeaway and Netflix.

The pandemic also claimed my April trip to Algiers, which I wouldn’t be too bothered about if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d sent off for, and received, an Algerian visa, which had cost over £100 – an unrecoverable cost.

Along with the trips to Rome and Algiers, I waved goodbye to a travel streak.

So in each of the months following January 2016, I maintained my streak of travelling abroad at least once a month all the way up to, and including, February 2020. That’s over 36,000 hours, four years and 50 months, and it would have carried on for at least two months more if my travel plans are anything to go by.

In that time I’ve visited over a third of the world’s countries, spanning five continents, spent so much time away from home and committed most of my earnings during that period to travel.

Since January 2016 I’ve graduated twice (with Batchelors and Masters degrees), started a career in travel, started at and left my first proper job, got an even better one and made so many memories across all this time.

So, what does my blog have to do with this?

I originally started this blog as an amalgamation of my passion for travel and my educational background when I was studying journalism at university.

The idea suddenly came into my mind on a Friday night in third year, and a few days later, on 1 November 2015, TravellingTom.com launched.

There was plenty to write about after a year in which I’d visited Krakow, Dublin, Ayia Napa, Budapest, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn and Helsinki, but in order to keep fuelling the blog, I’d need to travel more.

So shortly after starting the blog I booked the Oslo trip. Eindhoven followed, then Belfast, then Copenhagen, Malmo, Milan, Luxembourg, Rome and Bucharest – and that was just trips I’d had up to the end of May.

Having my blog not only gave me the push to travel more, but also opened up my eyes to the possibilities of just how much of the world I could see with the limited time and money that I had.

And while Coronavirus may have prevented another trip to Rome, this month’s trip to Algeria and has also left a summer stay in Toronto hanging in the balance, this will only be a temporary blip in the history of travel and tourism.

It may be permanently devastating, but soon enough we’ll be back on the road, in the air and on the seas, making new streaks and memories in the process and there’s nothing Coronavirus can do about that.