Mike, it' s a zoo! LOL It's the height of the season, so it's not surprising. It's very pretty in the part we're in, but the campervan part is an armpit. We're near the fence next to the park. It is lovely and quiet at night.

Clive, I imagine that everyone inside the ferry will be wearing masks. It's very strict in France, all enclosed spaces, you wear one or you leave - that could be drastic on a ferry

If you've been vaccinated, you have to get on with life, no?

Yesterday, we ventured out to the Pagoda of Chanteloup chateau. Amazing story. The chateau was second only to Versaille but got destroyed. The only things left are the pagoda and the gatehouse. But, very nice spot for a walk and nice tea room in the chinese garden and shop. Using the passe sanitaire no problem at all and ensures all there are either tested or vaccinated. Reassuring.

Off to Chaumont today.

Just a quick update having returned from ten days in France.
Going out there was a check of vaccination status at the UK check in and again at French passport control.
There were no searches for contraband food, although we were in a car with no Eriba so it may be different for those towing.

Within France it was pretty easy to do most things, masks in shops and busy places. we used the French TousAntiCovid app and this was needed to use restaurants.

We did an antigen test two days before returning and used the company Doonhammer referred to earlier, we had the negative certificate wiithn a couple of hours.
On departure the negative test result had to be shown and a completed Passenger Locator Form. I showed the pages on my iPad with no problems. You need to have the right reference number for your Day 2 PCR test to be able to complete the Passemger Locator.
On arrival in the UK it was just a passport check.

Interestingly our passports were stamped on arrival in France but the stamp was not at all clear, on leaving my wifes passport was stamped but the date could not be read and mine was not stamped. Good luck to the border staff when we return in November and they need to check how many days we have been in the EU area under the 90 day limit rules.

Quote: Clive795 wrote in post #17

---

Good luck to the border staff when we return in November and they need to check how many days we have been in the EU area under the 90 day limit rules.

---

Just_Chillin. Do they share that data across the Schengen EU area then ?
I can see how the French could log there own data but to upload to every other Schengen member would need a shared data system across a lot of systems.

The data has been shared for the past 40 years.

With the pace that government IT systems change I’d be surprised if they still weren’t :)

When an EU country issued a passport it’s details (number, photo, name, residence status etc) would be made available online to all the other EU countries so they could check EU residency status

That’s interesting about the sharing of that data across partner countries.
In my pre-retirement job we had no easy access to identify a persons movements around Europe and often the best we got was a passenger manifest confirming exit from the UK.
It may have been because the wrong application was being made by us but I don’t recall ever being told the data was there if we asked.
Using the right paperwork and the correct terminology was half the battle. MLAT applications to the USA were suddenly helped after 9/11 if you showed a link to ter*****ism.

Whilst "commuting" to europe over the past 20 years my passport was always scanned on exit and entry into all countries, including the UK.

Scanning enables database lookups and the origination of all that data can only be the passport office of the originating country so some basic data must have been shared.

Of course, each country then logged its own country-specific data such as date of entry and date of exit which might not be shared automatically, but its there in each country I have no doubt.

Also, I never had any issues with Schengen or non-Schengen apart from a) going through additional non-Schengen passport controls and b) what felt like having to leg it across half of Holland to get from the Schengen area of Schiphol airport to the non-Schengen area

I suppose I have that to look forward to on all trips to Europe now:)