In the end COVID won. We have returned home to Germany. We had hoped to keep travelling with no fixed return dates, but it wasn’t meant to be.

When we started our journey during the first days of August, COVID was rearing its ugly head again but seemed somewhat contained. It certainly wasn’t stopping Europe’s August flood of holidaymakers … including us. At one point earlier in the summer Asturias had been the first Spanish province to be declared COVID-free. But a few cases were popping up when we hit the road. Asturias was still safer than home in the Rhineland, so we set out.

It all kind of went pear shaped when we reached Spain. Spain, France and Germany all started showing accelerated COVID growth. Even though we were travelling in areas with low risk, we always had the virus on the back of our minds and it was always troubling. It just wasn’t fun to travel during a pandemic even when you knew you were taking extreme safety precautions.

We left Gijón on Saturday morning and made it home by Sunday night. Germany is offering free COVID tests to returning travellers so we got tested and are now in self-isolation while awaiting the results.

Padma and I got a glimpse of Asturias and we loved what we saw. We’ll love it even more if we ever return in a COVID-free world.