Will you continue cycling as normal during coronavirus?

ugo.santalucia

yellowv2 said:

Also agree regarding the common sense comments, it’s unbelievable that some people can’t seem to grasp the situation without having everything spelt out for them to the nth degree!

Yes and no... I am pretty sure that those who clogged Snowdonia last weekend thought they were doing the right thing, going for a walk in the countryside, socially distancing their family from others and probably did not expect it to be so busy.

The Government should have spelled out what they mean by "unnecessary travel", because when asked, they did seem to imply don't go abroad, instead it's about not taking the car to drive 100 miles to go to Snowdonia, don't go to your second home etc.

Finally, most of those images of Richmond Park are shot with a camera lens that makes people look closer than they really are.

There are still plenty of grey areas: can I drive 10 miles to reach my local woodland and go for a walk or do I need to walk from home?
How far can I drive? Is the Supermarket the limit?

pblakeney

ugo.santalucia said:

There are still plenty of grey areas: can I drive 10 miles to reach my local woodland and go for a walk or do I need to walk from home?
How far can I drive? Is the Supermarket the limit?

In France it is currently 1km from your door, including cycles, so not very far. Paperwork required to go any further and then it is only for food and medicine unless you are a core worker.

ugo.santalucia

pblakeney said:

ugo.santalucia said:

There are still plenty of grey areas: can I drive 10 miles to reach my local woodland and go for a walk or do I need to walk from home?
How far can I drive? Is the Supermarket the limit?

In France it is currently 1km from your door, including cycles, so not very far. Paperwork required to go any further and then it is only for food and medicine unless you are a core worker.

Yes, in other countries they have been very specific, maybe too specific. It would be nice to have a clarification of what the Government means by "travel".
As part of our one a day we would like to go for nicer walks than the ones we can do from home, not very far and on very quiet footpaths, maybe 10 miles by car, parking at a country pub which currently don't need their car park, but is it "travel"?

pblakeney

They are handling this much better than I expected but are treating it like they do the budget.
A few headline grabbers and the devil is in the detail.
I imagine that clarification and tighter restrictions are coming.
And to answer your specific question, yes. Maybe not today, but tomorrow.

yellowv2

Not sure I agree about the Snowdonia scenario.
To me it defied common sense unless of course each person/family thought they would be alone, extremely fanciful at such a place! The common sense approach would have been to go to ordinary open spaces woodland etc. Not common beauty spots/tourist attractions, IMO.
Even then surely everybody knew the advice was to distance yourselves and if this wasn’t possible go elsewhere, for goodness sake.

First.Aspect

neeb said:

First.Aspect said:

neeb said:

First.Aspect said:

Sturgeon just echoed UK government policy and has not done or said anything to deviate from this so far during this crisis.

Unlike last week she didn't manage to run fast enough to find a microphone first, though.

She's been ahead of the UK government on both banning public events and asking non-essential shops to close, and today she's ahead on saying that all construction not directly related to immediately necessary infrastructure should cease.

The mooted banning events of more than 500 people to being very shortly after a game at Murrayfield and the Old Firm game. The SFL took the decision before the government.

Stop watching BBC Scotland.

I don't think the SFL have much influence on decisions on shop opening and construction sites..

I suspect that building sites will soon be closed, but you need to understand that it is easy enough to say these things when you don't have any responsibility for putting the measures into place to stop these people losing their homes etc. For every single action in this scenario there is an unintended reaction. The Scottish government govern like a bunch of people whinging to each other in a pub. Why don't they to this or I think that they should do that. So they just lob the ideas out there and let someone else come up with the solutions.

Yet you see, when the shit hits the fan in an area that they ARE responsible for, that there is no real difference. The Scottish NHS for example has no more capacity and is no better placed to deal with this than the NHS as a whole, and that's devolved. She's not at the press conferences complaining about shortages in equipment there is she, because its their fault as much as the UK government's and she also relies on UK buying power to actually get the equipment into the UK in the first place.

ugo.santalucia

yellowv2 said:

Not sure I agree about the Snowdonia scenario.
To me it defied common sense unless of course each person/family thought they would be alone, extremely fanciful at such a place! The common sense approach would have been to go to ordinary open spaces woodland etc. Not common beauty spots/tourist attractions, IMO.
Even then surely everybody knew the advice was to distance yourselves and if this wasn’t possible go elsewhere, for goodness sake.

First you indoctrinate a generation that in order to get entertained they have to go to the local parks, National|Trust/Woodland Trust resorts and all sorts of beauty spots that can cater for outdoor activities, then you tell them they can go outdoors during a pandemic... where do you think they will go? The vast majority of people don't even know about footpaths, bridleways and whatnot close to their homes.

bianchimoon

The worry is landowners don't particularly like people walking on public footpaths/bridleways on 'their' land. There was a lot of hysteria at the time of Foot and Mouth, just about the whole of the Lake District was shut down to walkers, a public lane near where I live had hand painted signs saying road closed, children's play parks were shut down in rural locations. Any sniff of a chance to shut a footpath or bridleway down, they'll do it.

ugo.santalucia said:

yellowv2 said:

Not sure I agree about the Snowdonia scenario.
To me it defied common sense unless of course each person/family thought they would be alone, extremely fanciful at such a place! The common sense approach would have been to go to ordinary open spaces woodland etc. Not common beauty spots/tourist attractions, IMO.
Even then surely everybody knew the advice was to distance yourselves and if this wasn’t possible go elsewhere, for goodness sake.

First you indoctrinate a generation that in order to get entertained they have to go to the local parks, National|Trust/Woodland Trust resorts and all sorts of beauty spots that can cater for outdoor activities, then you tell them they can go outdoors during a pandemic... where do you think they will go? The vast majority of people don't even know about footpaths, bridleways and whatnot close to their homes.

dabber

ugo.santalucia said:

yellowv2 said:

Not sure I agree about the Snowdonia scenario.
To me it defied common sense unless of course each person/family thought they would be alone, extremely fanciful at such a place! The common sense approach would have been to go to ordinary open spaces woodland etc. Not common beauty spots/tourist attractions, IMO.
Even then surely everybody knew the advice was to distance yourselves and if this wasn’t possible go elsewhere, for goodness sake.

First you indoctrinate a generation that in order to get entertained they have to go to the local parks, National|Trust/Woodland Trust resorts and all sorts of beauty spots that can cater for outdoor activities, then you tell them they can go outdoors during a pandemic... where do you think they will go? The vast majority of people don't even know about footpaths, bridleways and whatnot close to their homes.

There's a lot of truth in that. Around mid lt year I went over to the darkside and started mtbing after just road riding previously. I started going places locally to me that although I sort of knew were there I had never ventured into. I was amazed how nice they were and how few people were around. A couple of them are only about 2 miles from home.

fenix

This isn't foot and mouth. It's not spreading to livestock. F&M was completely different and nobheads walking in the country were a risk. No wonder the farmers were annoyed.

Longshot

I'm actually cycling more as a result of this which is great. Mainly on the turbo but I might pop out round the back roads for an hour or so later today.

bianchimoon

Hey mr angry, the government admitted they learnt a lot of lessons about the over zealous reaction to F&M and would handle it totally different if/when it happens again. read the post properly instead of just ranting

fenix said:

This isn't foot and mouth. It's not spreading to livestock. F&M was completely different and nobheads walking in the country were a risk. No wonder the farmers were annoyed.

yellowv2

It was a rather unfortunate coming together of the restrictions and the end of an awful spell of weather. Had the advice had to be given a fortnight earlier in all likelihood people wouldn’t have been flocking to beauty spots. Probably wouldn’t have even ventured out!

Longshot

yellowv2 said:

It was a rather unfortunate coming together of the restrictions and the end of an awful spell of weather. Had the advice had to be given a fortnight earlier in all likelihood people wouldn’t have been flocking to beauty spots. Probably wouldn’t have even ventured out!

That's probably right. I'd personally like to thank Boris for timing the improvement in weather with this working from home stuff - most pleasant.

itboffin

Is it time to head to my bugout bunker?

First.Aspect

itboffin said:

Is it time to head to my bugout bunker?

Are all your tinned goods you bought to survive the Y2K bug still before their sell by date?

fenix

bianchimoon said:

Hey mr angry, the government admitted they learnt a lot of lessons about the over zealous reaction to F&M and would handle it totally different if/when it happens again. read the post properly instead of just ranting

fenix said:

This isn't foot and mouth. It's not spreading to livestock. F&M was completely different and nobheads walking in the country were a risk. No wonder the farmers were annoyed.

Well seeing as a housebound relative now has Coronavirus and at his age - its very doubtful we will ever see him again, I think I'm allowed to be 'angry'. We should be like France and really clamp down. No cycling. No walking more than 1km from your home.
No setting off up Snowdon.

ugo.santalucia

fenix said:

bianchimoon said:

Hey mr angry, the government admitted they learnt a lot of lessons about the over zealous reaction to F&M and would handle it totally different if/when it happens again. read the post properly instead of just ranting

fenix said:

This isn't foot and mouth. It's not spreading to livestock. F&M was completely different and nobheads walking in the country were a risk. No wonder the farmers were annoyed.

Well seeing as a housebound relative now has Coronavirus and at his age - its very doubtful we will ever see him again, I think I'm allowed to be 'angry'. We should be like France and really clamp down. No cycling. No walking more than 1km from your home.
No setting off up Snowdon.

I am sorry to hear that, but bear in mind even > 80 YO have a 90% chance to survive, so don't write them off just yet.

As for solo cycling: the problem, as I see it, is that if you take away a bit of outdoor exercise every day, then you move the issue to the GP practices, which will see more people with anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, low vitamin D3 etc... so then you have to make a decision if the low risk of ending up in A&E + the almost zero risk of contracting Covid-19 while exercising alone outdoors outweighs the above mentioned risks... GP practices are of course stretched to the limit too.
It is possible extra measures might be necessary in London, where there are too many people and possibly not enough space to exercise outdoor safely, although I don't believe this is the case, but elsewhere it's not really an issue

There is also a lot of talk of people behaving badly, but let's talk about people behaving well, for a change. Since Monday, I haven't seen anyone cycling other than solo or in a mixed gender couple. I went to the supermarket this morning and all customers were queuing keeping > 2 m apart calmly and without an issue.

DeVlaeminck

fenix said:

bianchimoon said:

Hey mr angry, the government admitted they learnt a lot of lessons about the over zealous reaction to F&M and would handle it totally different if/when it happens again. read the post properly instead of just ranting

fenix said:

This isn't foot and mouth. It's not spreading to livestock. F&M was completely different and nobheads walking in the country were a risk. No wonder the farmers were annoyed.

Well seeing as a housebound relative now has Coronavirus and at his age - its very doubtful we will ever see him again, I think I'm allowed to be 'angry'. We should be like France and really clamp down. No cycling. No walking more than 1km from your home.
No setting off up Snowdon.

My father is 90 with such underlying health issues I'm almost certain he wouldn't survive this virus, my mum wouldn't be certain to either. I'm not taking this lightly but I'm not sure what staying 1km from my house would achieve.

I did 3.5 hours on the bike yesterday and didn't come within 2 metres of anyone other than maybe passengers of cars that overtook me. The only thing I touched were the handlebars. I could have gone for a 30 minute walk round the local park and passed dozens of people walking the other way - which has the higher risk of spreading the virus? I don't see the point in clamping down if that means imposing restrictions for the sake of it.

ugo.santalucia

A few thoughts:

You lock people indoors without the opportunity of an hour of exercise outdoors and you will find GP practices clogged with folks with anxiety, depression and high blood pressure.
The UK has gone the 2m apart way and we should stick to it, Italy and Spain have gone the full monty all locked indoors instead. It was supposed to be 2 weeks, it will end up being 2 months, we'll see if they can keep enforcing it. Looking at the numbers, I don't think the full monty lockdown is working very well in reducing the spread to be honest.

You catch it at the supermarket, not whilst you're out on your bicycle... so I don't see the point in banning people running or cycling. we can't close the supermarkets because there is no capacity for home delivery, so we need to make them as safe as possible. This morning a nice orderly queue of people 2 m apart... 15 minutes later I was inside, a bit more people than would be ideal, but OK. No queues at the self checkout and only half opened to keep them well apart. Annoyingly, having to shop for the neighbour too, I can't keep it under 30 quid, so I need to use the keypad, maybe banks should relax the £ 30 rule on contactless for a few weeks... There are so many things that would be effective at reducing the spread, banning outdoor solo exercise is not one of them.

EDIT: A study published today from Turin hospital shows that all patients in ICU have low vitamin D... locking people indoors 24/7 is just a naff idea

mrb123

I think they have increased the contactless limit to £45 or are planning to do so soon.

ugo.santalucia

mrb123 said:

I think they have increased the contactless limit to £45 or are planning to do so soon.

Is it enough though? Ideally, I'd like to avoid shops as much as possible, so once a week would be OK... can't do a week's shop for 45 quid, even more so if I help my neighbour who is a single parent. 100 quid would be good

homers_double

Back to the original question, yes for now. I generally ride alone so nothing will change there.

If we go into full lockdown it'll be zwift.

Swimming will go down the pan now as everywhere is shut.

mtb-idle

Yes

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-NRFotl91U/

DeVlaeminck

Some interesting tweets from Derbyshire Roads Policing Unit.

pblakeney

Not paying attention to official advice, or ahead of the curve? 🤔

neeb

DeVlaeminck said:

Some interesting tweets from Derbyshire Roads Policing Unit.

That's pretty shocking and completely at odds with current government advice. Solo cycling for exercise once a day is officially encouraged for health and wellbeing. Lycra is the appropriate attire for such activity. The comment implies either a complete misunderstanding of that policy and/or blatant prejudice. The term "lycra clad" is discriminatory and offensive in this context due to its widespread use more generally as a mildly derogatory term.

If official policy changes, this will be communicated through government channels, not the police.

neeb

Just checked out the tweet - it seems that their objection was to groups of cyclists / clubs who had been seen out, which of course is rightly strongly prohibited. But that's not what they said, and the tweet is still there..

ugo.santalucia

Maybe it's time the public sector stopped tweeting altogether?

pblakeney

ugo.santalucia said:

Maybe it's time the public sector stopped tweeting altogether?

They'd have to start with the Twitterer in Chief. 😉