How Iceland suddenly became a hotspot for holidays
It s about as far as you get from a classic fly and flop, but there s a quirky charm in its volatile geology and experimental pop culture
11 May 2021 • 10:56am
Iceland, with its lunarscapes and geological spendlour, caters as much for the luxury set as it does the adrenaline-seekers
Credit: Getty
Oh, dearest Iceland, frozen saga of the north, you made it onto our green list, so I’m prepared to forgive you now for four miserable nights sleeping rough in Delhi Airport. As surely as coronavirus has scuppered travel dreams, I still recall Eyjafjallajökul volcano egregiously spewing clouds of airplane engine-stopping ash into the atmosphere back in 2010, leaving millions of passengers, myself included, stranded worldwide, desperately trying to rebook cancelled flights to get back home.
Green list destinations such as South Georgia are hardly fly-and-flop holiday favourites
Credit: Getty
Green means ‘go’, yes? Well, not always – as this week’s traffic lights announcement has demonstrated. While the green list contains a surprisingly generous 12 destinations, many – including Australia, Singapore and New Zealand – are simply off-limits to British leisure travellers thanks to their own border measures. Alas, they look likely to remain so for the foreseeable.
But what’s that – British Overseas Territories? Many of our own islands, in locations all over the world, have also been granted ‘green’ status. St Helena, the Falkland Islands, the South Sandwich Islands… forget scrabbling for sunloungers on Madeira and Crete, these spots offer real far-flung escapism. Could the last few crumbs of the British Empire offer up some crowd-free holiday hopes?