Exploring effects of Brexit on UK travel
ADowntonAbbey. LL we ask of Britain is that it never change. It must be a fixed emerald rock in the rushing Gulf Stream of change, always there to infuse Anglophiles with a sustaining dose of stone walls, pub sausages and the chance to say “pants” instead of “underwear”.
But the world, worse luck, has been messing with Britain. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whichever, the country’s dramatic vote to detach itself from the European Union in June forced devoted visitors like me to wonder: Would our future trips over the pond be – Gasp! – different?
Two months after the referendum, my 19-year-old daughter Isabel and I pulled out of a rental-car garage in central London . . . and immediately turned into the path of a lumbering delivery van. Nothing new about the delights of forcing my right-lane brain into a left-lane roadway!
But, intoning “left-left-left” at every turn, we set out on a weeklong sea-to-sea drive across Britain, crossing borders that now seem more meaningful between Wales, England and Scotland, regions of the country that all viewed the leave vote differently. In every corner of the country, we found a post-Brexit tourist scene that was considerably cheaper for Americans and still wrestling with what kind of Britain it wants to be for its returning fans.
“We’re in God’s hands now,” said Molly Breakspear, a tour guide in one of England’s most shamelessly backward-looking tourist sites: Highclere Castle, the still-occupied country mansion that is universally recognizable as the set of Downton Abbey. We made this PBS pilgrimage on our drive to Cardiff, Wales, where we would officially begin our cross-country tour.
Standing in that unmistakable red library – furnished for the real-life Earl of Carnavon exactly as it is for the fictional Earl of Grantham – it is easy to imagine the globe before globalism. The house – like the show – is a window on another age. Maybe not a simpler one, but one with no crowds of Germans, Americans and Arabs driving the hour from London and paying for the pleasure of treading up the magnificent oak staircase or putting on bad Mr Carson accents in the dining room lined with oil paintings.
“It certainly hasn’t hurt us yet,” Breakspear said above the murmur. “Plenty of Europeans still and quite a number of English people this year.”
One early effect of Brexit has been an uptick in Britons vacationing in Britain.
“What we’re seeing right now is a strong staycation market,” said Patricia Yates, director of Visit Britain, the country’s national tourism board, reporting a 10 percent jump in incountry tourism.
Even among continentals, the post-Brexit fall of the pound seems to have compensated for whatever affront they may have taken. But officials worry that the vote may feel like a snub in the longer term. Most respondents in a snap survey commissioned after the vote said that they were no less likely to come to Britain, but suddenly Europeans, at 69 percent, were far less likely than Americans (84 percent) and Chinese (88 percent) to say that the country is “welcoming to visitors”.
“You can see there is some scope for improvement there,” Yates said. “It’s something we’re going to be very mindful of.”
To in-bound Americans, the cost benefits of Brexit were apparent, even in the quid-haemorrhaging zone of London where we started our week. In August, with the pound two months away from a 31-year low against the dollar, we had a choice of central city hotels for under $200 a night and the fish and chips we had before visiting the Tate Gallery felt 20 percent less like pickpocketry than previous visits.
In the metropolis, of course, the referendum had done nothing to domesticate a city that’s been drawing outsiders since the first stowaway showed up on a schooner filled with nutmeg. At a world food festival in Duke of York Square, a huge crowd of Londoners queued up for Jamaican beef patties and duck sandwiches with hoisin sauce.
“It wasn’t the cities, you know,” said Harry Amir, a student eating an empanada. “You won’t find many here who are enthusiastic about being less in the whirl of things.”
We found that to be the case in Cardiff, as well, when we settled into the St David’s Hotel on the edge of the harbour with long view toward the Bristol Channel. Wales overall voted narrowly to leave the EU, but this port city voted to remain. After our obligatory view of Cardiff Castle, which has been a defensive keep in the heart of the city since Roman times, we mingled with locals at the waterfront restaurant row and found mostly Brexit sceptics.
Carys Stanton is one of many job-seeking migrants from the Welsh countryside who remain enchanted with the foreign young people she works with at Las Iguanas, a Brazilian cantina, as well as the global clientele she serves.
“It’s like the world comes to Cardiff here,” Stanton said, just after delivering some fishbowl-sized margaritas to a table of Mandarin speakers. “I would hate to see that change. I don’t know anyone that voted to leave, except for my grandfather.”
The next day, we drove northwest on the A48 and passed a sign: “Welcome to England”. (On the other side, it read: “Croeso I Gymru”, or “Welcome to Wales”.) In my previous visits to Britain, the borders between Wales, England and Scotland felt like subtle historical artefacts. But in the wake of Brexit, there is real talk of a sovereign divorce. Scotland, which voted heavily to stay in the EU, looks ready to revisit the secession vote that failed to pass two years ago.
We sped into the rolling velds of England’s Cotswolds, choosing the narrowest, most agrarian lanes possible in the direction of Stratford-upon-Avon. It seemed impossible that a global upheaval could disrupt this patchwork of sheep fields studded with tawny stone villages.