Laurence Dollimore
THE Government has sought to clarify the details of its lifting of coronavirus restrictions on outdoor exercise.
From tomorrow (May 2), everyone will be permitted to leave their homes to take a walk or practice individual exercise such as running, jogging or cycling.
Adults will be allowed out from 6-10am and 8-11pm, dependants and over 70s from 10am-12pm and 7-8pm and children from 12-7pm.
In the BOE state bulletin released this morning, adults have not been given a time limit, meaning they can spend as many hours as they want walking or exercising, as long as they are within the permitted time slots.
Children, however, continue to be limited to one hour outside each day, and within the times permitted.
If you’re going out for a walk, you must remain within 1km of your home. You may walk with ONE other adult from the same household.
If exercising, there is no distance limit but you must remain within your municipality.
The use of masks while exercising is recommended but not obligatory and there must be a distance of at least two metres between people exercising.
While performing exercise, ‘crowded spaces should be avoided,’ the BOE reads, adding that you cannot stop ‘unnecessarily’ while exercising.
If you need to take a break to catch your breath, it must be done so for the shortest time possible.
Everyone is permitted to ‘circulate on any road or space for public use, including authorised green areas, provided the limits established in this order are respected,’ i.e. you cannot leave your municipality.
You cannot use a motorised vehicle or public transport to arrive at a place and begin your walk or exercise.
It is also made clear that access to sports facilities which have been closed will not be permitted.
The time slots do not apply to residents in municipalities with less than 5,000 people, with all people allowed out from 6am to 11pm.
It has not been clarified whether dog owners can run with their pets, meaning that the same rules regarding taking your dogs outside continue to apply.
As usual confusion reigns supreme and logic? Well that word is just not part of the vocabulary here. If I go for a walk I can’t go outside of a 1km radius from my house, but If I jog, run, or cycle I can go as far as I like. If I go for a walk I can choose either my wife or my 17 year old daughter to accompany me, not both, but if we jog, run, or cycle we can all go together as long as we remain 2 metres apart, which by the way has been scientifically tested and proven to be not far enough – approximately 9 metres is the safe distance. Of course, at home we eat together, sit on the sofa together etc, but outside we must stay an arbitrary distance apart. All this make sense to anyone? Anyone know what constitutes a walk? Do they mean a stroll? When does a walk become exercise, five kph? six? more? Is power walking an exercise or a walk?
Couldn’t agree more with bigmickt: So which bunch of autocratic bureaucrats made the asinine determination that ‘walking’ is not exercise? Certainly, most physicians would disagree with that assessment – as would those who are too old or infirm to ‘run’ or ride a bicycle but are advised to take some form of exercise – for example, a 45 min walk a day. ‘1km’ – is that as the crow flies or where the roads take you – since facilites for walking in this excessively urbanised wasteland are pretty limited and, if following a circular route via a road that takes you home, is 1.1 or 1.2km out ‘breaking the law’? I’m also bemused by the statement that if taking break to catch your breath it must be as short as possible; how long is that? Are the authorities going to monitor your ‘exercise’ and tell you what level of respiration and pulse is deemed to be sufficient unto continuing ‘exercise’? Is a mixture of (stopping) running and (starting) walking forbidden if the running gets too much for you? Is a skateboard a ‘motorised vehicle’? Is, for example, ‘skateboarding’ an exercise? The degree of nonsensical absurdity inherent in ’emergency legislation’ alongside crass attempts to legislatively quantify any and every possible type of activity continues to grow.