I suspect it will soon be a case of “papers please!”.What galls me is that I raised a point about preparedness for a global ‘disease X’ pandemic during a BBC Question Time program from Birmingham in 2005. WHO have been warning about one for decades. We prepared a Pandemic Flu plan at that time but effectively did very little about it, even after SARS 2002, Bird Flu 2005, H1N1 2009 and MERS.2012.
The news about local authorities in China suppressing warnings by medical professionals and the awful coincidence of the outbreak with Lunar New Year and mass people movement sounded very loud warning alarms. Just my Epidemiology 101 taught me there was potential for a pandemic. We didn’t know enough about COVID19 to model its effects properly and ignored scientist who warned that the true moratlity rate won’t be known until the pandemic has subsided.
It has been handled very poorly in the UK in my opinion.
The landscape feature in the background is The Devil’s Beeftub, which lies a few miles north of Moffat, in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland. The road is the A701, one of my favourite driving roads (great to link with the A708, which runs west from Moffat to Selkirk. I live nearby, in Peebles in the Borders.
We went for a lovely drive in the sun earlier to National Trust Croome Park thinking it would be quiet and we would have a nice walk, albeit without our customary tea and cake at the end. The roads seemed very quite and the car was driving nicely, with the hood down obviously. As we got to the narrow lanes approaching the property it seemed to get a bit busier and when we arrived it was closed because it was full. We’ve never known that to happen there before. The lanes nearby were all lined with parked cars and it was chaos as the disappointed visitors trying to get past the traffic queuing to get in. Still, the drive home was equally nice and we had our afternoon tea when we got back. I was going to take a picture when we were parked up but never had the chance.
^^^ I said to my OH yesterday when she mentioned our local NT park is now free for all to enter, it’s not going to be as nice and peaceful there then.
We usually go for a walk in the week, been this week it was lovely, now we heard similar to the above, packed out. The same with another favourite, NT Shrugborough they had to close the car park.
I just hope that all of these extra visitors treat the grounds with the same respect that we members do and that the car parks - especially the grass overflow ones - don’t get too churned up with this extra traffic.
It was a well-intentioned gesture by the NT but proved to be unsustainable. At least we have something else to look forard to - NT properties re-opening.
Our one regular walk is, or was, in Clumber Park. However, this park has also been closed due to crazy overcrowding for the last few days, which has occurred since the NT announced they were waiving the entry fee. To be expected, but just the opposite of what is needed.
Tell anyone they can get something for nothing and they’re in like Flynn. This means that NT membership (for those with annual subscription) is presently meaningless.
I only taxed my NC from the start of March, if it carries on the same we’ll be confined to quarters and it’ll go on sorn again.
The NT membership many years a member and from last year Scottish heritage membership, English properties too doesn’t look good value but we’ll keep it on for now.
My wife and I are members of both English Heritage and The National Trust - have been for years. Although we often don’t make use of the free-entry benefits to the properties, and some could say we don’t actually get our money’s worth, we look on the positive side of this, and consider that our subscriptions help both associations preserve the wonderful heritage of this beautiful country.
It would be good to know if we can just ‘go for a ride’ under the Government Guidelines. For us and particularly me, driving is very therapeutic, a nice circular route and a pack up, heaven.
If you have seen any information on this please feel free to enlighten.
In this context I think does it count as an ‘essential journey’ as all other journey types are discouraged. The premise being that even if you are socially distanced then there is a potential for you to add load to the emergency services which might be better served elsewhere if you have an accident.
and we’ve a dry spell ahead so hopefully squeeze in a rural run or two before lock down.
