Police guidance on ‘what constitutes a reasonable excuse to leave the place where you live’ was updated (for England) this week. The bit that I noted as being of particular interest was that it is permissible to drive to the countryside to take exercise. That does come with some caveats – for example, one should spend more time on the exercise than the driving but it has two benefits for me and Jane:

1. We can find some starting points beyond our front door and thus explore the local area further than we had previously been able to.
2. The car can get a longer run now and again to keep it ticking over. We don’t want to clock up hundreds of miles but, since it sits outside all the time, it will be good to give it a long enough drive to warm up now and then.

Obviously, thought needs to be given to why there is a lockdown in the first place. We’ll continue to stick to quieter times of day and aim to pick places that we think won’t be much frequented. However, I think choices like this morning (setting off at 7:30am on a Saturday morning in pouring rain to walk near Mount St Bernard Abbey) are pretty safe – we saw a handful of passing cars on our walk but not a single pedestrian or cyclist.