I would like some common sense opinions on this.
My partner and I both live separately, 20 miles apart. In normal life we essentially live 'together' in each other's houses, switching between the two.
DP is a key worker doing sporadic shifts. We've both been entirely isolating since before the lockdown other than when DP is at work, the only person I've had close contact with is DP. We have no children. We live rurally, so when at home we go for walks, where we often see no one, occasionally walk past another walker. That's it. We touch nothing when we are out walking, we are extremely careful.
We both have elderly vulnerable parents who live near our respective homes, so we have been their primary source of deliveries - online groceries are impossible to get. So they have been relying on us to do their shopping for them.
We were at my house when lockdown was announced, so we stayed at mine. However, DP then needed a prescription urgently, so we travelled to his town to collect it - rather than doubling the travel by returning to my house, we stayed at his house until he went to work, then self isolated at his house for a week after he had finished work. During that time we took a delivery to his parents - keeping a large distance between us in the garden.
Then my family needed prescriptions and groceries, so we did the same for them and again decided to miminise the travel by locking down at my house for a week. However, my family have been extremely critical of me moving between two houses like this.
Our community have been extremely vocal about second home owners coming to stay on holiday - there has been some very unpleasant stuff on social media. And I completely agree that people shouldn't be doing that. However the reasons that people shouldn't come to their second homes are that they could be bringing infection from another area to our community, they are putting added pressure on our small grocery shop, they belong to a different health board so are putting additional pressure on our stretched resources. Those issues simply don't apply here because I already live here and am just moving between two empty houses within the same health board area, using the same grocery store for both houses. The infection transmission risk in doing what I'm doing is minimal.
My mother says she fully understands that we are minimizing risk, but she believes that the rules are the rules and I shouldn't be driving. We fell out over it yesterday and it has really upset me. DP is currently at work, so we're going to lockdown at his house once he's home to minimise risk to anyone else. My mother told me I should stay there for the duration of the lockdown now.
I simply can't see how what I'm doing in any way increases risk.