Are people driving to exercise?

[confusedofengland]

I am having a bit of a rubbish half term & finding it difficult to keep the DC entertained, as well as feeling a bit bored myself. We are lucky enough to live in a village with 2 decent playgrounds plus a good half dozen decent walks, but we have done them all to death since March! The recent wet weather hasn't helped either, as a lot are too muddy to be passable. But we are sticking with it & going on a bike ride tomorrow to mix things up a bit.

However, I am noticing that more & more people are driving to parks/woods in other towns with their DC & I am dreaming of doing the same myself, but can't bring myself to until guidelines allow. I am talking anything up to 30 mins drive away (12-15 miles).

I do drive - to shop for food & care for my elderly grandparents - so I don't know if that makes me hypocritical? We have also been going to playgrounds regularly. One friend says that she is comfortable with the risk she is taking because they have only just started going to playgrounds as they are bored of our village.

So, I just wondered, is everybody driving for exercise and am I being over cautious in not doing so? I feel like I'm the only one! We're in England btw (I think rules/guidelines are different elsewhere).

A 7 mile bike ride isn't very far, I don't see what's wrong with that. If he'd driven for 7 miles to walk 1/2 mile along the beach, that would be different.

It was never confirmed that he left his house rather than was driven part of the way there.

The point of lockdown is that you should stay at home unless absolutely necessary to go out, and when you do go out, stay as close to home as possible.

Exercise is a good thing. Driving locally to a bridleway to run where there is nobody else is not a risk to anyone. The point of lockdown is to stop the spread of covid. Not stay at home in snd of itself.

If the government wanted to ban driving for leisure, they would have done so. Other countries have very clearly put a strict limit (say 1 or 5 miles).

"local" can mean anything. If it's fine for the royals to travel 100 miles from one residence to the next, it's fine for us to drive to the nearest beach or park or outdoor exercise facility. Cornwall is a bit of a stretch if you live in Northern Scotland...

That's fine. It says that you can travel further afield to access open space for exercise.

You seem to be saying different things to different posters @cautiouscovidity

You had imposed a 2-3mile radius for what counted as local earlier.

Legally, yes you can drive to do exercise. The distance is absolutely irrelevant. It's the reason for leaving the house that is the key in law, and whether it's reasonable to leave the house to do it, not the distance you take.

We do it all the time but in rural Scotland so it's never been as issue

And if police are fining people for driving 'too far'.. well then you need to appeal the fine, because it will be overturned.

The guidance does say village, town or part of city where you live. That's really very restrictive.

On the whole I try and follow all law and guidance, and receive shielding letters. I stayed indoors during the first part of the pandemic as instructed. I think lockdown adherence is very important.

However I think the instruction to stay local is unfair and unnecessary and have advised my parents to ignore that guidance. I live in a nice place and don't really need to travel to exercise (so on the whole don't). But I think there are plenty of people who should ignore it completely (eg living in a deprived suburb of a city) and everyone should feel free to have the odd trip a bit further afield to exercise in a different place.

Well on the BBC north west evening news last week a poor woman with a baby had driven 7 miles to her local beach and was fined by the police (they were checking registration plates for registered address). It was awful!!!

@PurpleDaisies

That's fine. It says that you can travel further afield to access open space for exercise.

You seem to be saying different things to different posters @cautiouscovidity

You had imposed a 2-3mile radius for what counted as local earlier.

Where have I said any different? I said that for most people^^ "staying in their village, town or part of the city they live in" (as per the travel rules) would likely mean travelling no more than 2-3 miles (in the context of exercise) because if they were travelling further than this, then they'd probably be leaving their village, town or part of the city which is against the rules for travel (unless you have a disability that makes it necessary to travel further afield for accessible exercise or you don't have open space in your inner city area etc.).

Obviously, if your supermarket is 5 miles away (because your village, town or part of the city doesn't have one), then of course you need to travel that far to go shopping.

Or travel 20 miles to the hospital, because it's the closest one..

In my case, I can go for a walk / run / bike ride in my village and so I have no need to travel to the next town to do so (even though I would jolly well like to have a change of scene). But I cannot do the weekly shop in the same vicinity, so I drive 5 miles to Tesco.

I really feel sorry for the police expected to enforce rules when there aren't any rules

Yes i do. I drive 5 miles to work and exercise afterwards straight from the office before driving home.

Yesterday i had a day off and drove 4 miles to have a run on the flat as I didn’t want a mountain run.

There is no difference in either.

I Know plenty of people who are doing this.

I drive for exercise to enjoy a different quality of mud. Being surrounded by a heavy clay is bad for the mind and calf muscles, so sometimes it's refreshing to experience the change of a light loam or hummus.

I also drive so that not every run is a knee knackering pavement pound in my irritatingly undualting neighbourhood, or with the calf crushing final two miles up the bastarding hill away from the valley. Especially when I can't access a sports massage due to lockdown.

As long as you're not turning up to an overcrowded beauty spot, and being a nuisence with poor parking/ littering, or driving halfway across the country to a higher risk mountainous area ill equipped and poorly skilled, the actual covid risk is very, very low from people taking their exercise outside wherever it is.

Derbyshire Police had Foremark on their radar because of persistant nuisence parking obstructing a blind bend on the road last May. They had to revoke the fines issued to the two friends because no law was broken.

“Local” is open to interpretation. We haven’t been particularly far but quite often driven for a walk, usually within 3 miles but sometimes up to about 10.

Yep we drive 3 miles to the nearest nature reserve and 5 miles to the closest NT site. I think the issue is driving so far you’d need to stop off to use a toilet but driving for up to maybe 30 mins is fine. Honestly at this stage I really don’t have an issue with anyone driving to get some fresh air, it’s the only joy any of us currently have.

Yep, I drive half an hour to local woods, see there, I said local without even thinking as I view them as local. I've got an annual pass and go once or twice a week. My village is full of loons who don't believe in lockdown and press me up against hedges to tell me what a load of old rubbish it is so I find going further afield saves me from these total twunts. I literally never go anywhere else 🤷

Oh and I run quite happily for around 3/4 hours in total isolation - zero chance of catching or carrying Covid

We did today - 25 minutes drive to a Wildlife Trust woodland, barely anyone there & far safer than the same walk we do constantly which is busier & harder to distance on narrow paths. I’d still consider it local & have followed all COVID rules.

It’s not things like that that are the issue IMO - more people blatantly mixing & not following ‘the rules’ because they’ve decided they’ve ‘had enough’ or didn’t actually give a shit in the first place (like a friend of a friend I know who is a cater in an old people’s home having lockdown parties, non mask wearers without a valid reason, ‘just having the neighbours in for a cup of tea’, the COVID deniers who are more concerned about their social life than the greater good etc etc - all of whom you see on MN with pathetic self centred justification every day). Going for a local walk that involves a fairly short drive isn’t an issue OP, go for it!

[quote cautiouscovidity]@Carycy It says stay local in your village, town or part of the city you live in. By definition, this would mean that you should stay very local (within a radius of 2-3 miles for most).
So if your town is fairly large, then yes it would be ok I guess to drive 5 mins from your house at one end of town to the park at the other. But not to drive from your village to the big country park 5 miles down the road. [/quote]
There is no "by definition". The definition of local is not "within 2 to 3 miles" and even if it was, the staying local guidance is just guidance and not law.

@SteveBrexit

there was no traffic at all during the first lockdown.

The traffic is absolutely normal these days - here at least-. Everybody is driving!

And yet cases are falling at an amazing rate, far faster than in the first lockdown. Surely a sign that "everybody" driving isn't really a big driver of infection.

We're staying close to home, and walking, cycling and tomorrow having a session putting up nesting boxes- lots of climbing, hammering etc.

An old fashioned ordinance survey map with all the footpaths and green lanes marked on it can be very useful.

I'm puzzled by people driving 3 miles to a country park. Surely if the objective is to get some exercise, why not cycle or walk the three miles.? Why bother with the car at all?

Well you also have to get home again, and presumably will wander around the park. I do have a country park around 3 miles away and often do walk there, round the park and back, which means I end up walking around 8 miles, but that would be too far for many people, eg with young DC or mobility issues, so it's either drive or not go.

I agree about looking at OS maps for your local area, or just exploring. I live on the edge of greenbelt between 2 large cities and have walked locally on most days in the last year. I was still finding new paths as late as November, including a really nice one that I had totally missed, despite walking past multiple times, that now forms one of my 'get out for an hour at lunchtime' circuits.

@Mintjulia because not everyone can walk 6 miles. I.e young kids / toddlers.
Roads might be unsafe also

No. There have been quite a lot of fines in our local area. I'm pregnant so don't like to go out because it's really busy despite lockdown (much busier than pre COVID, I assume people used to go to the gym). So on a Sunday we leave at the crack of dawn and do about 10 miles. Our exercise has been cut dramatically, pre COVID I would do 30 miles a week, DH would be 40+.

Yes, in my head local is less than half an hour drive. Most of the time we walk in our village but during half term or at weekends we mix it up a bit.
We have also been combining it so went to a further away park when we went to the dentist in another city or if we go to the farm shop.