How Will Brexit Impact Our Travels

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In what ways will Brexit impact our travels?

This post is not to share our opinions on Brexit, but to share its implications – and as I write this, current unknowns – for our motorhome travels. All of these thoughts are based on what I’ll call “as far as we know”.

We set off on our travels into Europe in July 2018 without giving too much thought to what implications Brexit might have for us. At least, I don’t remember it weighing on our minds. Fast forward to Christmas 2018 and Brexit has taken over all our talks about our longer term plans.

>> It’s worth noting that when I refer to “Europe” in regards to Brexit, this is specifically the Schengen Area countries. If like me you have no idea where this covers, check out this map or Our Tour’s description. <<

“As far as we know” if there’s No Deal

As we understand it, if there’s a No Deal Brexit, restrictions for travel in Europe will begin on March 29th 2019. Again, as far as we can tell this will mean as UK citizens we will suddenly be restricted to 90 days travel in every 180 days.

What does this mean for our family’s travel?

We know that this is what already applies to Americans, Australians and New Zealanders and they still manage to make long term travel work for them in Europe. It’s not ‘the end of the world’. The thought of a No Deal and its travel implications makes us feel restricted and like we’d have to plan a lot more in advance.

A big part of what we’ve loved about our travel so far is the freedom to make it up as we go along. The only true deadline we had was returning to the UK in March for our MOT.

Our plans if there’s No Deal

Our ferry is booked to return to France in March for a housesit we have organised.  If there’s No Deal, we will have until end of June to ‘get out’ of Europe again. We feel at the moment we would likely return to England and spend the summer months exploring the UK. It’s not what we really want to do, but the other options involve heading into Eastern Europe/Turkey etc, or crossing into Morocco and North Africa. We are reluctant to do this mainly due to the heat and not wanting to ‘get stuck’ in really hot weather after our experiences last summer.

How Will Brexit Impact Our Travels

“As far as we know” if there is A Deal

As we understand it, if there’s A Deal, restrictions for travel in Europe will begin at the end of 2020. Again, as far as we know this will be the restrictions mentions above – UK citizens will be restricted to 90 days travel in every 180 days.

What does this mean for our family’s travel?

This is what we are hoping for as a best case scenario, as it doesn’t impact our immediate travels. Mostly it makes us feel incredibly thankful that we started our journey when we did!

The possibility of these two years ‘grace’ has already changed our thoughts for our travels. In the past few months we have both been considering returning to the UK to settle down again. We’ve gone as far as looking for jobs and what’s available to rent. As we’ve considered the implications of Brexit to us, we’ve become more determined to continue travelling if there is A Deal. I suppose it’s what you’d call wanting to ‘make the most of it’ while it lasts – ‘it’ being our freedom to travel in Europe.

Our plans if there’s A Deal

Simply put, if there’s A Deal we plan to continue travelling for as much of the next two years as we can. We will head to France later in the spring for our housesit, and then see where the wind takes us. This is something we have treasured most about our travels, and we can all but cross our fingers that we have a bit more time to travel in this way.

Links to further Brexit travel reading

Here are some of the articles we found helpful: