Walking "close to home" - what does this mean?

Saetana

Isn't the idea of driving somewhere to exercise defeating the purpose? Staying in your local area means just that - too many people thinking they can bend the rules to suit themselves and that is why we are in this mess.

Agree.

NotSpaghetti, your original question:

'"close to home" - what does this mean?'

was, quite frankly, ridiculous - but, yet another, good example of all the justification attempts, rife on here.

I've always thought that basic psychology should be on the curriculum. People should, at least, be aware of their own, and others, motivations and thought processes.

They will often do what they want - while inventing 'reasons' for it.

Common sense, like deodorant, is never used by those who really need it!

I ‘m living in France and during the first lockdown every time we left the house we had to have an attestation/ piece of paper to self certify the reason for being out. You could travel to the nearest town to buy ‘essential’ food/work items (ours is about 10km away). If you wanted to exercise you had one hour and could go up to 1 km from your house.
This lockdown we have a curfew from 6pm to 6 am in this area (8pm to 6am in the rest of France). You can only travel during curfew with an attestation as to limited reasons for why you are out of your home.
I know the British wouldn’t put up with this but it seems to work here. The French do seem to accept more regulations and don’t forget, their police are armed so it’s a big incentive to obey.

Hetty58 I think my question was far from ridiculous and nothing to do with psychology. It was a genuine attempt to find out fact. You are simply ridiculing the title of the thread.

If you read the original post (let alone the thread) you will see I have attempted to clarify and contextualise the question. I wasn't asking "what do you think it means or "how do you interpret it" I asked for a link to a factual website - I was hoping for Police or Government ideally.

Some of the responses show us trying to interpret the rules and still stay within them. I was hoping that somewhere there would be a simple factual answer.

I'm sorry if you think asking for a link requires people to "^be aware of their own, and others, motivations and thought processes^".
I think it does not.

go to www.gov.uk/coronavirus

lockdown rules.! do not leave your home accept for essential shopping close to home and short exercise/ walk close to home!

NotSpaghetti, what exactly would you do with the information?

Would you use Google maps to work out exactly how far you could walk - in all directions?

(Maybe that's a pretty good idea, though, especially for anyone who thinks driving four miles is OK.)

In lockdown, we should only go out for 'essential' reasons.

The image of the Air Raid Warden in Dad's Army keeps popping into my head.

Don't question anything, don't ask any questions just do what you're told. Lots of exclamation marks!! Its all those other people's fault, if it wasn't for them we'd be much better off. Poster elsewhere saying we should be more like China.

Just listen to yourselves.

NotSpaghetti My personal interpretation (for all that it matters) is that people should, where possible, go for walks round their town, village or park (if there is one). Most small towns and villages have pleasant walks which can be reached without driving. It's a bigger problem in built up areas and allowance has been made for people who would need to drive a few miles to reach an open space. It's difficult to put a precise distance on that.

The ideal situation would be for everybody to stay shut up in their homes for a few weeks, but the government has sensibly recognised that isn't reasonable and allowing people out to exercise is a concession. If people abuse that, we're going to end up with harsher restrictions. Policing that for 66 million people is hard and relies on people caring about the common good. Unfortunately, if too many people take the micky and infection rates don't go down, we're all going to end up paying the price.

As I said, it doesn't really matter what I think. It wouldn't actually bother me personally if I had China-style lockdown measures imposed, but I don't have children or dogs.

Alegrias1

The image of the Air Raid Warden in Dad's Army keeps popping into my head.

Don't question anything, don't ask any questions just do what you're told. Lots of exclamation marks!! Its all those other people's fault, if it wasn't for them we'd be much better off. Poster elsewhere saying we should be more like China.

Just listen to yourselves.

One of my grandmothers was an Air Raid Warden. She used to become apoplectic about some of the pathetic excuses people came up with for breaking the rules.

I purposely referred to the Air Raid Warden in Dad's Army growstuff because he was a caricature.

lemsip I've been there (obviously) and even quoted from it on this thread

?

Hetty 58, yes I would! I'd do exactly that to avoid a fine. THAT was the purpose of the question.

So, for example, have a lake near me - about a mile away.
Is that "local"? It's in a different county.

Like you NotSpaghetti I have read the rules several times, but am still not completely clear about their meaning.

Today is Saturday and I have two large dogs to exercise. If I take my usual daily walk through the park I will arrive at the seafront where today I will have to battle past walkers, joggers, children on bikes, more dogs, wheelchairs etc. It is like a free for all along the front at the weekend and impossible to socially distance.
Instead I am going to get in my car and drive 3 miles to the open moor, walk for two hours, passing perhaps two other dog walkers, then drink my flask of coffee in my car.
Risk assessment completed, no looking for loopholes, just using common sense.

You only have to read this thread and others on the same subject to see that everyone is just doing what suits them. Any attempted enforcement of “keeping safe’ is met with howls of protest and criticism of those who are trying to keep the virus under control. Often at considerable risk to themselves.

I find it really hard to get my head around the way people can hold two opposing ideas.

“Somebody should get this virus under control. Things should be stricter.”

“I should be able to do to decide what is best for me to do. My actions won’t affect the spread”

.Ellianne that seems very sensible and safe to me. Much better than taking your car in for essential service and MOT which is permitted, and find Covid safety in the garage is not as good as it could be and you feel at risk.

If we can avoid meeting anyone at all and take precautions then ideally we should be able to do so knowing we are behaving in a responsible manner. However, there have to be rules and a line has to be drawn somewhere because so many are not being sensible.

That’s the problem. For every person who, like Ellianne, can make a sensible decision, there are at least a dozen who cannot and who will make poor decisions, not purposely but thinking what they are doing is ok or necessary.

Either we accept that everyone can make their own decisions, even though many of those decisions will be bad.
Or we say that because many individual decisions will be bad we have to remove the right of decision, even from those who can make good ones.

There’s no way of singling people out. You make good decisions so you can do what you like. You make poor decisions so you must obey.

If anyone makes their own decision as to what is sensible they have to accept that everyone can do that.

'Keep your distance' is one of the rules.
Ellianne intends to do that while crowds of people on the seafront may not.

Surely that should be the deciding factor.

What's the point of saying "Yes, they are all close to their homes so that's okay." while harassing people who drive to somewhere uncrowded?

I guess because lots and lots of people have taken the decision to drive somewhere “uncrowded”.

If one person can drive to the moors then so can 100 or 65 million. None of us can say “but it’s only me”.

All those people on the crowded sea front won’t be local. They’ll have made it crowded by travelling there. But you can’t complain about that if you’re travelling to somewhere else, can you?

A sensible person, if on arrival at place that they expected to be quiet discovers that it is in fact busy, will stay in their car and go elsewhere.I seem to recall some Gransnetter (s) saying that they have done that very thing. Both well-intentioned and sensible, IMO.

We live about 25 miles from the coast and whilst a normal weekend walk would be a drive to walk along the sea front (in an area that has been counted as officially suppressing the virus) we accepted that this weekend that will not be possible. So coats and shoes on and a circular (boring) walk around our village where we encountered dog walkers, cyclists, joggers and shoppers. But we kept to the rules and were out for one hour in our local area.

I have just looked at the regulations on the Government website. It explains that “local means stay in the village, town or part of the city where you live”. “You should not travel outside your local area.”

That seems fairly plain to me. So no driving out to NT Gardens, Beaches, driving to open moorland, etc.

If we stayed in our village we wouldn't eat. We could get food delivered, but that's another slot taken away from people who can't/shouldn't go out. Our neighbours are already complaining they are having difficulty getting a slot some weeks.

Our nearest shop is about three miles away in the next village. In the opposite direction about five miles. Those are small shops - we do a major shop once a month about eight miles away by car, then walk to the smaller shops once a week.

MamaCaz

The problem as far as i can see lies in the definition - or rather in the absence of a written definition - of the words 'local area'.

I have no idea at all what would mean to me. Our parish boundaries? The area covered by South Northants Council? Something else? Not that I know where any of those boundaries begin and end.

It's neither clear not specific about what this means, and makes the fine handed out seem very unfair to me.

I bet it wouldn't stand up in court!

Exactly!??

Suzzanah.I will be driving to our nearest farm shop 3 miles away on Monday to top up our food as it's bother 10 days until our next supermarket delivery slot.And using the same trip to shop for our Auntbin her 90s living alone.That's necessary.I shan't however be driving the 6 miles to the resevoir I was going at least once a week to walk the dogs and meet my friend for a socially distanced walk as I had been doing before Xmas.We never bought a coffee on the way by the way !.Just exercised ourselves and the dogs. Ow it will be from home alone.