Travelling is tough enough without nonsensical made-up rules

Simon Calder’s Travel Week [View in browser]( [The Independent]( [Travel] Simon Calder’s Travel Week [Simon Calder]( Written by Simon Calder | July 23, 2021 “Don’t know why you’re making Tui the bad people here,” wrote Gazza Wright in response to [a tweet]( from me. I was sharing the bizarre story of [Britain's biggest holiday company, Tui, warning a family that their four-year-old boy would not be allowed on board a cruise because his passport expires in five months' time](. The lad's grandfather, Robin Roberts, had contacted me in desperation from his home in Wales. They had been told by Tui to get an appointment for an emergency renewal at a passport office. The only available slots were in Belfast and Glasgow – but it made no difference because same-day renewals are not possible for children's passports. Tui and its excellent staff have endured an awful 16 months during the coronavirus pandemic. But how have we got to this, where a respected and trusted company is making up rules that appear to require customers to make needless and pointless journeys to faraway passport offices? Cruises are in such sad shape that forlorn, empty ships have become tourist attractions in their own right Back to Gazza's tweet: "How many years has it been in force that you need at least six months on your passport?" A very round number: zero. Some countries, for example Egypt, make the annoying demand that your passport should have six months remaining from the day of entry. But in many popular destinations, from Barbados to the US, your passport is welcome for stays up to and including the date of expiry. Until this year that was the case in the EU; since Brexit, [British visitors to the European Union must have a passport valid for at least three months after the intended day of departure](. Anthem of the Seas in the Clyde on Thursday: the first cruise ship to call at a Scottish port this summer For Tui to threaten to bar a four-year-old passenger who complies fully with the law of the land would be absurd enough for an international voyage, but [the Foreign Office has warned against cruises abroad for a year](. He is booked on a sailing from Southampton to Scotland and back. After I challenged Tui to produce any evidence at all of its hard-line stance, the firm has backed down and apologised. The lad will be allowed onboard after all. Travellers already face more than enough actual restrictions that appear devoid of any rational explanation without holiday companies dreaming up others that serve solely to alarm and upset their customers. Destination of the week: Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein, Bath Bolt from history: a publicity picture from the new Bath attraction Talking of weird and inexplicable phenomena: Bath has a scary new attraction. [Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein]( opened this week in the city where the author wrote much of the early science fiction novel in 1816. The venue is a grade II-listed Georgian townhouse two doors down from the more genteel Jane Austen Centre. Inside, the exhibits tell the story of Mary Shelley's troubled life and her marriage to the poet Percy Shelley; her monstrous creation; and the popular culture her book inspired. "Everyone thinks of Frankenstein’s monster being a flat-topped green-skin creature with bolts on its neck made famous by Boris Karloff in the 1930s," Chris Harris, co-creator of the attraction, told me. Instead he asked a special effects company to replicate the eight-foot high “perfect human being” as originally described by Mary Shelley. “She’s a phenomenal person," he says. "She had a tragic life, a chaotic life, but still managed to produce one of the most important books in English literature." Deals of the week: Ireland and East Coast rail - [Ireland]( this week became the only destination abroad for fully vaccinated British travellers to visit with neither tests nor quarantine required. The civilised way to arrive is by sea, and Stena Line has a neat way to make a weekend visit: £44 return from Holyhead to Dublin, available for stays of up to 36 hours. You could, for example, sail on the 9am outbound on a Saturday morning and return on the 8.30pm departure from the Irish capital on Sunday evening. No pre-booking required. - Every little helps in rail travel. On the East Coast main line linking London with Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland, LNER is refunding 2 per cent of the ticket price to people who use its LNER Perks app to pay for journeys. There's also a £5 discount on your next Advance ticket simply for downloading the app. Question of the week: when is a traveller fully jabbed? Question: My son will receive his second NHS Covid vaccine on 17 August. Will he be considered fully vaccinated on 31 August when we would be flying back? Answer: No: 14 full days must elapse before someone is able to claim quarantine exemption. Ideally see if he can move the second jab a day or more earlier. If that doesn't work, buy a new, later flight that arrives on 1 September. 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