'Nightmare' treatment at airport for regular visitor

Dennis Boxall, who lives in the Cotswolds, has been visiting the Bailiwick for decades and was shocked by the treatment he received when problems emerged with his travel tracker form.

‘The officer in police uniform stood over me in a very menacing position – I was in my wheelchair and I felt humiliated.

‘I love Guernsey, I was a visitor, why should I be intimidated like this?

‘When I asked him politely what his authority and rank was he said “I am the ultimate authority that could put you on the next available plane back to England.” Can you imagine how I felt?’

Mr Boxall, who is fully vaccinated, accepted he had not complied with all the travel tracker requirements and he had only a vaccination card instead of a certificate.

But he said that did not justify the manner in which he was treated.

‘OK, I was at fault and I apologised, but I plead age and incompetence. It was like being in an interrogation cell. It was unacceptable and unnecessarily draconian.

‘Looking back, it’s an experience that I can’t forget, although I’d love to wipe it out of my mind because it was like being in a police state, like the books and novels you read about on what happens in foreign countries in Eastern Europe, but this was Guernsey.

‘It was a nightmare, like the worst possible dream, but it wasn’t a dream – it was reality.’

Mr Boxall, a veteran of the Berlin Airlift, was visiting the island to see friends and watch this week’s air display. He has been specially invited to meet some of the pilots.

He had expected to go straight through the blue channel, but had to spend the first two days of his holiday in isolation until he received a negative PCR test.

Despite the experience he said he still loved Guernsey and it would never put him off coming back.

Staff at Les Cotils, where he is staying, rallied round, and a taxi driver dropped him at the Covid test centre for free.

‘That’s Guernsey, not what I experienced up at the airport, where it was like a foreign land.

‘I love the people of Guernsey. Here at Les Cotils they’ve been so kind, particularly I would like some recognition to Erin on reception, who is leaving for Exeter University, she’s been wonderful.

‘That’s Guernsey. That’s the goodwill that balances and weighs more heavily on the good side of Guernsey than the fragment of bad that I’ve received.’

Mr Boxall said he went public with his experience because he was worried that if it happened to first-time visitors they would never return. Now that he's out of isolation, the nonagenarian was looking on the bright side with a new taste

for freedom.‘It was amazing to be freed. And, in exactly the same way, to be locked up in isolation has made me appreciate freedom.’

. A spokesman for Bailiwick Law Enforcement said that the Guernsey Border Agency did not have the powers to put people back on a plane.

The spokesman added that visitors are given the choice of complying with restrictions or leaving the island.

Five Covid cases in hospital in Alderney

THERE are five cases of Covid-19 in Alderney’s Mignot Memorial Hospital and one in the Princess Elizabeth Hospital.

There are currently a total of 124 known active cases of Covid-19 in the Bailiwick, with 103 in Guernsey and 21 in Alderney.

That is a reduction of 11 since the statistics were published on Friday.

Over the weekend, 45 new cases were identified in the Bailiwick, while 56 people had recovered.

Of the new cases, 12 are symptomatic community cases, 23 are contacts of confirmed cases, three are day of arrival travel related, four are post-arrival day seven tests, and three are community return to education testing.