Stay "local" - what a conundrum!

 

Stay “local” when exercising – whatever that may be!

 Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advice to stay local when taking exercise was typically vague. This came with the reintroduction of the current lockdown following the predictable post-Christmas surge of the Pandemic as a result, it is believed, of the PM allowing family gatherings for turkey.

Now he's saying we may exercise, but stay "local".

Would the PM care t0 define what is meant by "local", he was asked by British Cycling and Cycling UK.  I haven't read of his response.

He could have suggested a radius from home, say three or maybe six miles. That would be clearly understood.

But we know better than to expect the  PM to be more specific, as his advice  to relax our guard a to enjoy a limited Christmas family get-together proved.

Perhaps he’d heard the virus was going home for the festivities and wouldn’t be back until Boxing Day.

He rabbited on and on about wanting us all to have a normal family Christmas with grandparents and a few relatives thrown in.  In doing so, revealed his complete lack of empathy for the many thousands of people who live alone and don’t have a family and so had no prospect of a risking a shared Christmas even before the Pandemic increased their isolation.

Pressed by his scientific advisors fearing closer contact over Christmas would see the virus spread, Boris rowed back a bit.

Celebrate Christmas. Don’t celebrate Christmas. Invite the grandparents – if you have any.

One aunty, one uncle, or one nephew and perhaps a niece. You’ll have filled the six spots before you know it.

Apply the two-metre rule, even at the dining table. Small table? Eat in shifts.

Meet over the garden fence, for those who have gardens.

He couldn’t bring himself to say stuff Christmas get togethers and stay safe.

So, to the exercise conundrum.

Local means different things to different people, as recent news stories have revealed. For many bike riders used to clocking up 80 to 100 miles local might mean a thirty mile jaunt.

Boris’s own interpretation of staying local by cycling at the London Olympic Park seven miles from Downing Street drew criticism for not being local at all. He should have gone round St James Park or Hyde Park, only a few minutes away, said his detractors.

The “science” says the point of staying local is to reduce the chances of spreading the virus to other areas – should you be an unwitting carrier.

So what sort of distance should “local" mean in this context? Perhaps Boris might have suggested a radius of X miles, not stray beyond that.

What should it be, three miles radius, six miles?

That would be clear.

Staying local is no problem for me. I define local to mean no more than four miles from the house.

Perhaps even that is too far?

I’ve been limiting my cycling to within three or four miles of the house for nearly two years now, because my wife and I are carers of our chronically ill daughter and it doesn’t do for either of us to be away from home for more than an hour.

So our house has been practicing “lockdown” for years before the virus locked up everyone else.

I missed doing decent rides to begin within.  But needs must –- as the saying goes.

Now I’ve got quite used to my limited field of play, going out most mornings at 8am, before the house is up.

I’m lucky we live in a small market town in the middle of North Downs in Surrey, and I can be out into the countryside within minutes.

I shoot through town out and back on a cycle track beside a trunk road.  Occasionally, when the legs let me, I take a loop onto a quieter roads up the mini-alp,  lifting me up 400 feet to the top of downs. Then back down and into a local wine estate for a few laps of a small road circuit servicing the facility. 

For variety I can also exit town in the other direction, out and back to a  village one mile away, over a few minor drags. I  retrace through my town,  head out of the other side to the vineyard for a few finishing circuits.

As the saying goes, Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike.

It’s doesn’t matter you don’t go far, just keep those pedals turning.