‘We took the risk and went on honeymoon during a pandemic, and we struck lucky’

In October 2019, my girlfriend, Andrea, took me for a walk on a rainy Hampstead Heath, got down on one muddy knee and asked me to marry her. Naturally, as a travel writer, my priority after saying “Yes” was to start planning the honeymoon.

The pandemic made a mockery of our wedding plans, but we committed to doing the official bit in October 2020, regardless. Our honeymoon was similarly curtailed, although we still held out hope for a post-wedding break.

At the end of July, travel corridors opened to parts of Europe, while the rest of the world remained out-of-bounds. So our eyes turned towards the Mediterranean in autumn, when the weather would still be warm. Despite our shared love of adventure, my fiancée lobbied for a “proper holiday” with some days by the pool, so we settled on Sicily, which has a volcano at least.

Travel corridors were quickly closed to countries with rising infection rates. Spain was the first to go, then France, the Greek islands and Croatia. Italy’s numbers were steady, but crept upwards in the last week of September.

We were nervous on the eve of our wedding – not because we were getting married, but because it was a Thursday, which marked the weekly travel corridor cull by the Transport Secretary. We had made rudimentary contingency plans for Cyprus and Scotland, but Italy stayed on the safe list for now. Our honeymoon was happening.