Most of what you read is government ‘advice’ or ‘guidance’ and only a subset of it is ‘law’ enacted by the relevant parliament or devolved assembly.
Regarding the use of non-emphatic terms like “where possible”, it’s complicated. For example, some people have a legitimate reason for travelling from Tier 4 to a lower tier area (e.g. to work, provide care), But going into a lower tier area for exercise doesn’t sound like a good reason.
Regarding your intended activation, there is no formula to give you a Yes or No answer, I think common sense applies. Some of us are very lucky to have ‘easy’ summits within a ‘short’ drive of home. As Jimmy @M0HGY said above, some are not so lucky - so may have to do some chasing from local non-SOTA summits for a few months.
I’m walking [4.5km] to my nearest summit tomorrow (G/LD-058) for an activation but that’s more to do with helping me and my dog shed some of our extra xmas kilos than for covid risk reduction. I feel infinitely safer on my local hills than shopping in my local supermarket.
Only if you wish to open the debate. If you have to go looking for philosophical or etymological arguments in order to justify something, it’s probably not within the spirit of what the guidance is trying to achieve.
It’s like driving 50 miles with your children in the car in order to test your eyesight. It may be legal, but it probably wouldn’t (and didn’t) pass the pub test.
You are right to consider the purpose and spirit of the guidelines Andy, but in doing exactly that I have, on work days, activated a summit outside of my home council area/tier, but in that of my work QTH. Daily outside exercise and recreation was/is allowed, as is travel to access an outdoor space.
The guidance advises to reduce the number of journeys as much as possible. I did precisely that by activating Gun G/SP-013 (close to my work QTH), integrated into my morning commute. I did The Cloud G/SP-015 (in my home QTH council area) on the way home. Two periods of daily exercise and outdoor recreation, without requiring ANY extra journeys (so my number of journeys for outdoor recreation was reduced to zero). The “valid excuse” to cross boundary into another local authority (which, previously, was also a different tier) was work, in which I am categorised as an “essential worker”. So yeah, in my case, I very much reflected on the purpose of restrictions on movement, and came up with a solution that gave me my physical and mental health requirements without necessitating any additional journeys or contact with people.
I think many are still missing the point here. It’s about not putting yourself in a position where you might need emergency services. Yes you can slip and fall on the street out walking for your exercise but no matter how experienced you are it is more risky in the mountains. A slip and fall on the street may mean an ambulance coming to take you to hospital. A fall in the mountains may mean mountain rescue, coastguard, air ambulance, police and ambulance service as was needed in the Mournes yesterday. Our emergency services are under massive pressure at the present time so don’t potentially add to it.
I agree Esther. I wouldn’t dream of heading into the mountains at this time. Just my local hill that I know inside out, near to my home, in my local council area, that is a short easy 7 minute walk to the summit! Plus the one on my work commute on workdays - which is similarly trivial and safer than a typical high street!
I wasn’t suggesting that I would go and bend the rules, nor do I intend to break the spirit of the rules by latching onto words which are, in my view not clear enough. Others will!! I was just giving a practical example.
I live in Robin Hood’s Bay. An attractive honeypot for visitors on the NE coast. Our village and others along this coast have been inundated by visitors during this pandemic - on some days we’ve had more visitors than we’d have in summer!!
Even though the message during our first lockdown restrictions was to stay local and only go out for exercise, people were coming here from all over norther England ‘for exercise’. And what exercise were these people getting? A walk around the village, a short walk along the beach, followed by a coffee and fish n chips then back in the car. The number of locals catching Covid increased exponentially during that time.
The visitors still continued to flood in flood in from areas of higher Covid restrictions to our area of lower restrictions when the rules were changed.
Whilst I’m sure the majority of people will abide by the now, much tighter restrictions, others will take advantage of the ‘weasel’ words. Unfortunately, as Andy says, the rules are just guidance until enacted into law and, in my opinion should be enforced like they are in some other countries.
Must go, I’ll check our village car park and see how full/empty it is.
Just gone into what we call Level 5 lockdown here in EI for at least another month. At least the position here is clearer “Exercise within 5km of your home” (and you will potentially be fined €100 for a breach), we even have an app that draws a 5km circle around your house and as my nearest summit Two Rock EI/IE-018 is 10.1km away that puts me back in the Chaser seat for now. Hope to manage a few Winter Bonus before March is out.
David…It could be that the advantage of having rather inprecise rules is that it could allow one to get ones chums off the hook when there was a little … erm… indescression, and simultaiously allow the public to be blamed for any failure of the rules… Teesdale is L4 and the local car park is full… as are several wards in our nearby hospitals…I would hope that any future redrafting of the rules made them rather clearer and enforcable and actually enforced “/rant” … personally have rather given up on the winter bonus for this year and am now looking forward to getting out in the spring, which is a pity as it would be a wonderful day on Nine Standards with the ground frozen hard and dry feet for the journey! 73 Paul
Council area is good for me, many years ago I was under the banner of South Shropshire District Council, however with 6 local councils they decided to centralise it from Shrewsbury and become Shropshire Council!
So now it appears that under this council idea, I have the 10 summits of Shropshire at my disposal! That said, I think heading over to the Wrekin G/WB-010 may be pushing it!! I’ll probably stay within about 20miles of my home in Ludlow
So that is 25 points in the winter bonus, the 4 x 2 pointers and the 5 other other ones,
A good observation. I live in the area and hadn’t though of that!
During Lockdown 1 it was the case that Wrekin residents could use recycling centres in both Wrekin and Shropshire CC areas, but Shropshire Residents could only use the Shropshire CC ones. This particular quirk meant that I had to drive a longer distance on more dangerous roads to get to a recycling centre, counter to the “stay local” advice. My closest recycling centre is actually in Staffordshire - which is a whole other kettle of fish!
Which all just goes to show that even with a diligent approach and the best of intentions sometimes you can’t do right for doing wrong!
I’m jealous. I’ve got two in Cheshire East, plus one in Staffordshire Moorlands on days when I have to make my essential journey to work. All them winter bonus points too - you lucky chap!
Mind you, there’s always someone worse off than oneself. I think of poor @G4OIG…
All this local government reorganisation is difficult to keep up with, as well as being most inconvenient! If it was still Cheshire - without being split into West and East, and without the annexations from metropolitan counties / unitary authorities, we would also still have Black Hill G/SP-002, and Raw Head G/SP-016 (although the RHB relieved us of that pleasant little walk before Cheshire was bisected).
It’s only something I’ve heard used ironically. Although there are the usual rivalries and loyalties between named areas that you get in any urban area of a decent size, and the whole Old Town vs New Estate thing plays into it a bit.
A couple of the areas have the strap line “Rich In Heritage” on the signs as you drive into them - I feel that this too must be ironic!
Historic boundary changes take a lot of stomaching don’t they, County and Council / Metropolitan… Were you born in 1974? I lived in Bridgnorth then, worked at RAF Cosford and my XYL worked in TELFORD. That was then!
I’ve had my first whiskey tonight in many moons! Can you tell?!
and as my nearest summit Two Rock EI/IE-018 is 10.1km away that puts me back in the Chaser seat for now. Hope to manage a few Winter Bonus before March is out.
