[NB this post has been updated. I have been informed that the LLTNPA has not closed the gates to all its carparks but instead police tape has in some cases been placed across them]
The Foot and Mouth Crisis
We have been here before, although the corona crisis is far more serious.
I well remember the start of the Foot and Mouth crisis in 2001. I turned up to the International Winter Climbing meet in Glenmore Lodge midway through the week, unable to climb as I had broken my shoulder and wrist in a 500ft fall a few weeks earlier ( and no, I never called mountain rescue). I was greeted with the news that those present had agreed that all climbing and hill-going should end with immediate effect to try and help stop Foot and Mouth spreading. Some well-intentioned person made the proposal, no-one dared question it and rationality got thrown out the window. There were no sheep or cattle around the Northern Corries in the Cairngorms or many of the other places where people were climbing……………
The countryside went into immediate lockdown. No-one dared go out climbing or hill walking because of social opprobrium that would have ensued. There was a real risk that any visitors’ car would get tanned. Although this lasted for just a few weeks, there were terrible consequences for the rural economy which relied on tourism to a far greater extent than any politician had appreciated. After lots of behind the scenes negotiation, the National Trust for Scotland eventually agreed to raise its head above the parapet and to “re-open” a few limited “safe” areas. The winter had been cold and icy and, with my bones healed, I set off with a friend to Glen Coe to celebrate. We were the only people there. The NTS had put up maps showing “forbidden” areas at all their car parks and there were troughs with disinfectant to wash your boots. These were to become a feature of the wider countryside for months afterwards. The only permitted way to access the climbs on Bidein nam Bian and the Three Sisters was via a narrow strip across to the bridge heading up to Coire an Lochain. The permitted access strip was blocked by sheep, the only place in the whole of Glen Coe that we could see any.
We used our common sense, skirted around the sheep by walking through the area marked out of bounds and then enjoyed a wonderful ribbon of ice up under Ossian’s Cave and round onto the top of Aonach Dubh. While life was good again for us, it took months for others to dare to venture out into the countryside again.
While the Foot and Mouth panic had terrible consequences for the rural economy, it transformed the political response to the access debate. As President of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland I had been involved in negotiating the agreement which eventually formed the basis of our access legislation. That agreement with the landowners had, however, then re-written by the civil servants, who introduced a host of qualifications that could have made access in Scotland worse, not better. It was thanks to Foot and Mouth that all that changed. The newly elected Members of the Scottish Parliament saw what an economic disaster Foot and Mouth had been for the countryside and insisted that the initial recommendations of the National Access Forum were enshrined in legislation.
The Coronavirus crisis and the importance of access to the countryside
The threat from the coronavirus is, of course, far greater than Foot and Mouth but in the world panic that is sweeping all before it, ALL the lessons from Foot and Mouth are being forgotten and the countryside in Scotland is being locked down. This is not rational and affects people living in rural areas as much as those living in urban areas.
Being out of doors is the safest place people could be in terms of either catching or transmitting the COVID 19 because there is lots of space to observe social distancing and few hard surfaces on which viruses can be transmitted by hand.
Our governments are not acknowledging one simple fact, being outdoors is generally far safer than being stuck in our homes. The place where someone is living is one of the primary locations where COVID 19, like other respiratory viruses, are transmitted. This is because people are living in close proximity and there are so many hard surfaces. China recognised this which is why when they tracked a case of COVID 19 they immediately removed that person from the home (see here). That was met with outrage but, without measures that address this issue, the COVID 19 crisis in the West is likely to last for months. Its not difficult to understand why: person working in “essential service” goes home to family not knowing they are infected; after seven days pass on to first child; after 20 days second child infected; after 30 days partner, who is working in essential services, infected. You only need one member of the family to be asymptomatic for the family to come out of self-isolation and spread the virus back into the community. It doesn’t take much to see why this crisis will go on and on for months without testing and contact tracing (see here).
To get out of the crisis we need a plan based on where its safe for people to be and who can safely go out. The countryside has a key role to play in this, as an area where it is safe to be, whether if you are working (which I will consider in a further post) or going out for your own physical and mental health.
The response of our National Parks and SNH to the corona crisis
Unfortunately, what has been happening is a re-run of Foot and Mouth, with a minority of people living in the countryside, backed by certain politicians, leading the charge for a total lockdown. The Scottish Government and our Public Authorities have stood by and let this happen. I understand, for example, that the Cairngorms National Park Authority is awaiting guidance from the Scottish Government before its access officers take any action against paths and car parks that have been unlawfully blocked (actions that effectively only affect local people living in rural areas given the legal measures that have made it illegal to travel longer distances).
Its worse than this, however, two of public authorities who have specific statutory duties to protect access rights have led the actions which have been shutting down the countryside and are making exercise of access rights, even for physical exercise, so difficult:
SNH, which has for the last few years been promoting the benefits of green health (see here), has closed all its facilities that support this. Its worth repeating here that public toilets and car parks were two of the facilities which were exempt from closure under the draconian Coronavirus Health Protection Restriction Regulations Scotland 2020 which, I repeat, were passed without any scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament 12 days ago.
Even worse, was the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority. It closed its car parks and toilets BEFORE the Scottish Government tried to stop people going out of doors.
The LLTNPA could and should have been setting an example of how people from the Glasgow conurbation could be supported to enjoy the countryside round about. Instead, however, I thought they had suddenly found a justification for all the money they had spent installing gates across their car parks. Instead, however, while some gates have been closed in other cases the car parks have been closed off with police tape. Actions like these, however, have stopped people from places like Callander, which is within the National Park, from driving out to places like Loch Venachar (five miles away) to go for a walk.
Its seems to me now clearer than ever that those in charge of a public authority which has a statutory duty to promote public enjoyment to the countryside would prefer not to have the bother of assisting anyone to come to the countryside. One might have hoped that in a time of crisis, helping people get out for their physical and mental health would have become more important, not less.
Pityoulish – a beacon of hope and an example of what should be done
The sanitisers at Pityoulish (top photo) are exactly the sort of thing that SNH and our National Park Authorities should have been doing, enabling people to get out safely instead of placing barriers in their path. I don’t think anyone knows what the risks of transmitting the virus via the handles on gates is – it will depend on the volume of people and factors such as how sunny it is – but, let’s accept for the moment that there is a risk that needs to be addressed. Well, Pityoulish has provided a solution. Brilliant!
And so it is for all the other so-called unsolvable problems that people are claiming at present justify banning people, whether living in rural or urban areas, from going out into the countryside. There are always solutions! Examples include: management of visitor numbers in order to help people observe social distancing in visitor hotspots; increasing the frequency that toilets are cleaned; covering up signs that were designed to be touched. Every potential problem has a solution, given the will. And if people are worried about the efficacy of any solution, the answer is let’s get public health and environmental health involved, instead of letting them be sidelined by our governments (extraordinarily Environmental Health have not been asked so far to help address the crisis).
Meantime, the experience of the Foot and Mouth crisis was that it was far more difficult to re-open the countryside than close it down. Farmers who found the time to block off car parks and access routes in the middle of that crisis, were suddenly too busy to remove them when the crisis was ended. Other sectors of the rural economy then paid for that while the farmers received compensation payments. The unlawful blockages in the countryside are now so extensive that they will be very difficult to remove even if the Scottish Government saw commonsense and said it wanted people to start visiting the countryside again. I believe that Access Authorities will need to be given extra powers to remove the obstructions, without following the current bureaucratic processes. (For a discussion of how the LLTNPA has dealt with unlawful signs and the barriers facing staff (see here)). Otherwise, Scotland’s reputation as having world class access rights is likely to lie in tatters and the tourism industry may take years to recover.
Pityoulish is therefore doubly important because it shows that not all landowners respond to crises by trying to keep people out. There is, I believe, a deep instinct at play here that is encapsulated in the phrase “an Englishman’s home is his castle”. In a crisis, the land becomes part of the fortifications around the castle, it helps keep people out and keep perceived danger at bay. This instinct for self-preservation is also what leads to very rich people in the US and elsewhere to buy their own bunkers where they could hunker down for years in case of a nuclear meltdown. As soon as this crisis started, gun sales in the USA went up. Not all of us believe we are in it together. In these circumstances, landowners who do act in the wider public interest need to be praised to the heavens.
The number of such landowners, compared to those who try to shut their land down, is likely to be crucial to the future of tourism in our National Parks and the wider countryside in the medium-term. A wise Councillor in Inverness recently cautioned the social media trolls who were hunting every last “visitor” out of the Highlands, warning people to be careful of what they wished for. This crisis is a lot more serious than Foot and Mouth and therefore the consequences of the messages being given out are even more important. Visitors and potential visitors won’t forget how people in the countryside responded to the crisis. Accepting that health services in some parts of the Highlands could have been put under serious strain, it makes a real difference how people were asked to leave.
I don’t think the people trying to close the countryside down completely in Scotland represent the majority of those living there (and not least because lots of people from rural areas have been contacting me about my posts). One of the problems, however, that others face in speaking out against attempts to close the countryside is that our Public Authorities who should be supporting them and showing the way, have abdicated all responsibility. They have simply become part of our over-centralised government in Scotland. Once the inevitable parliamentary inquiry into the mis-management of the coronacrisis is instigated, a part of the inquiry should look at why SNH, the Cairngorms National Park Authority and the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority never incorporated any of the lessons of the Foot and Mouth Crisis into how they responded to Covid 19.
I well remember foot and mouth in 2001 and also found salvation in Glen Coe. The response as far as outdoor access is concerned has been reminding me of it for some time, and you have made sense of it. There appears to be not a lot of logic in banning people from the countryside, provided they keep their social distancing up.
And in this debate , there’s a political and even a class element – healthy cross country runs like at our private schools good, sunbathing (what taps-aff neds do) bad… We don’t want the swarms from the city out here with their dirty diseases.
The position in Wales is much the same
Last Friday I broke the law – not deliberately – but nonetheless, it’s what happened. For shortly after dawn I went running, and later, as the sun began to dip, I walked the lanes by Rhosgranog farm. On both occasions – as that name might give clue to – I neither saw nor passed a soul; which is just as well because here it in Wales it’s now illegal to exercise more than once a day!
Two weeks ago the Derbyshire police thought it appropriate to use drones to track the movement of ramblers in the Peak District – it’s worth pondering that a moment… The criticism they received. was thankfully widespread. Not that it’s stopped Milford Haven Port Authority from banning the use of kayaks by shoreline residents of the Daugleddae estuary. If you’ve never heard of the place there’d be a reason for that…
Over that first weekend of Spring sunshine, there were reports of Pembrokeshire being ‘overrun’ with visitors. Social media was hyperbolic with protestations and opinions that bore little rational analysis; the politicians were quick to follow. Within a day, our beaches were out of bounds, car parks barricaded, all of us confined to our few square miles. The other day there were reports that farmers in Wales were calling for every footpath to be closed.
In truth, it was one farmer and the BBC looking for a story. Just as on the day Pembrokeshire was ‘overrun’ I had parked at one of the ‘hotspots’ with perhaps a dozen other cars, walked eight miles and passed three couples – all politely keeping our distance. Powys – an area the size of the home counties – has some of the lowest reported cases of the virus in the UK, and yet I read of a resident in the Brecon Beacons who suggested that ramblers touching stiles and gates would be a danger to health.
A regular line of the regional commentators (especially so in Wales) is that that our rural health facilities have no spare capacity for ‘outsiders’. Leaving aside that short term visitors are not going to fall over with Coronavirus, there is obviously some truth in this statement. But the bigger picture is that as of now, every health authority in the UK has a capacity problem – it’s not unique to Gwynedd or Pembrokeshire or for that matter Scotland. The important question is whether in such circumstances we are going to retreat to exclusively local arrangements or have the vision – and public generosity – to be part of even more national one?
Rural areas should have a keen interest in this question, even in more normal times. What happens, for example, if or when their capacity is exceeded – as must regularly happen with say dialysis or specialist surgery – should they have reasonable call on spare facilities elsewhere? Of course, they should. But then must surely this must mean that as the Coronavirus spreads – with pressure bearing most on urban facilities – they have a responsibility to reciprocate in kind. If not, the position of those regional defenders would seem to be ‘what’s ours is ours alone – while what’s yours is for us to share’…
Now before the keyboard warriors rush to comment, let me first be clear on what doesn’t concern me. I’m saying social distancing is the wrong policy – far from it. Nor am I suggesting that hundreds walking up Pen y Fan is a compromise we should embrace for the wellbeing of outdoor types – that would be bad in practice and poor in spirit. I’m not even concerned at the Government simplifying its messages in a way that’s clearly suboptimal, urban biased and occasionally contradictory – in time, all this will pass and our judgement will be shaped by statistics more than words.
But if I turn again to that farmer suggesting we ought not to touch his gates, or the National Park closing its doors, or the local politicians effectively saying (however nicely they add a please) ‘stay away’ from our corner of the countryside … and I contrast that to the thousands of people working to keep supply chains open, to manufacture goods, to serve us in shops, to keep supporting and for that matter subsidising rural communities – there’s a certain lack of generosity, of reciprocity in attitude, of a sense of acknowledging how lucky we in the relative safety of the countryside are – and looking for ways that we might share that good fortune, even if the means to do so are not yet obvious.
Great comment, well written. Amongst all the leaders failing to lead and politicians viewing PR as top of their list, just imagine what sort of grown up debate we’d be having if they all stood back and discussed the way forward in the mature way you have in your comment. Cheared me up just to read it! Thanks.
Your naivety astounds me and I’m afraid to say you are massively out of step with this post. You appear to conflate closing car parks and other key areas where people congregate as completely shutting down the countryside and that is clearly not the case. Full rights of responsible access still apply, as long as you do it from your own home or in your own immediate locality. ThecHighland Council has just reiterated this today and warned landowners not to block access. Legislation wise there is nothing to stop climbers living in Fort William getting a last winter route in on the Ben just as there is nothing to stop a mountain bike based in Aviemore going for a ride up the Lairig Ghru.
The common consensus though, as evidenced by statements from pretty much every outdoor governing body under the sun (including the BMC and Mountaineering Scotland) is that this is not the time to do that, when such a virulent and transmissible disease is killing hundreds of people per day. I’d love to hear your details on how you intend to manage visitor safe distancing in known hotspots. Police? Volunteers? Other non essential staff not at work but deemed ok by you to be put at greater risk of exposure? No doubt you thought it was ok for Catherine Calderwood to swan off to Fife while others in her profession are dying trying to help others. You need to get a grip.
Hi Steve, I suggest you read my post earlier this week on what I believe Catherine Calderwood’s jaunt really tells us. That’s great that Highland Council are warning landowners not to block access, it will be interesting to see just how quickly the photos in this and my last post come down, meantime no access signs are going up all over the country. As for managing access, the people living in towns appear to be doing very well in parks, given the limited room, and I don’t doubt they would do the same in the countryside now that people have appreciated the importance of keeping a distance. I realise I have may have appeared out of step on this, though lots are now starting to speak out about the impact of keeping people in their homes (see here)but I am in a lucky enough position to be able to speak out and talking to lots of other people I know they feel the same. A government that makes it a criminal offence for someone, whether living in an urban or a rural area, to sit in the sun in any circumstances (outside of their garden if they are lucky enough to have one) is a government that deserves to be criticised. Nick
I’m not a reader of your blogs Nick but read this on a link someone posted onto a mountain bike FB forum. I have now read your Catherine Calderwood blog and unsurprisingly disagree with quite a lot of that too. You make the mistake first of all by expecting us all just to accept what you think is right:
‘Her drive to Fife, her stay overnight in her second home and subsequent resignation tell US (my caps), I believe, four things..’ No I’m afraid it doesn’t, it just tells you four things.
I also disagree with this statement: ‘So what Catherine Calderwood said in justification of her journey is crucial, she knew it was not dangerous because she and her family could observe the social distancing rules.’ Basically what you are saying here is we can go back to normal as long as we stay 2 metres apart. I just think that is a nonsense in the current climate. And your naivety comes to the fore when you suggest ‘If your destination, say a car park in on Loch Lomond, is too crowded to observe the rule either stay in your car till people have dispersed or go somewhere else’. Do you seriously think that is what people would do? You might have helped develop acccess in Scotland and you might have been a big shot in the BMC or whatever, but you don’t seem to have much idea how the majority of people behave in the countryside!
I’m not an apologist for either the UK or Scottish Governments and I worry about both opportunistic landowners and heavy handed or ignorant policing, from stories that I have heard already. I also think that the Scottish government advice out today is wishy washy and biased towards landowners. But overall I still think you are out of step on this issue.
Hi Steve, thanks for reading the Catherine Calderwood post, I don’t expect readers to agree and debate is essential if things are to move forward, whether on corona or anything else. That is what democracy is about. There is a huge range of opinion and the situation is changing daily. I’d like to make just one point and that is that individuals or household groups being able to go outside for either recreation or work while observing the 2m social distancing rule would not be everything returning to normal. Far from it, it would affect absolutely everything. As a small example, I don’t climb with my family and as I climber I don’t believe its possible to climb while the social distancing rules are in place. That’s not just a matter of space, spotting your mate as they leave the ground, its also the fact that it involves lots of shared equipment (every krab used is touched by both people). Nick
HI Nick,
Your post on restrictions on access to the countryside and comparison with the foot and mouth epidemic struck a cord with me. I was in agriculture as an agricultural adviser on crops for many years and could not believe the panic with the minister on TV saying “This is serious!!” and telling people to stay away from the countryside. There was not a scrap of evidence that people moving in the countryside had anything to do with the spread of foot and mouth but where it becomes directly relevant is on the scale of the economic impact of that ban. An economic study in England showed the losses to agriculture were about £200 million, all covered by compensation to farmers, but to the rural economy they were £600 million – none of it covered by compensation. There was no parallel economic study in Scotland but the disparity in the two figures would have been better. Hillwalking and Mountaineering for example are the biggest economic driver in the Highlands apart from the general tourist industry – sustaining about full time jobs 6000 jobs as a careful study showed. Even five years after that ban, in my discussions with some rural businesses catering for outdoor activities, they had not fully recovered.
The impacts will likely be similar this time and hence your rational for restricting outdoor activities must be carefully thought through and clearly answer the question “How will this lead to spread of the virus?” As far as I can see this had either not been properly addressed or the rationale behind it not clearly expressed. How do people walking up a hill keeping 2m between them and passers by risk spreading the virus?
“you don’t seem to have much idea how the majority of people behave in the countryside!”
The vast majority of comments on the mainstream media recognise that people are following the guidelines on social distancing. If people are able to do this in cities, why would they not do this when they get outside? Unless the only people going to the countryside are the minority (mainly teenagers) who have been spotted in groups which disperse and reform as the police appear.
Last night’s Newsnight had very interesting interventions by Professor Susan Michie and Andy Burnham (Mayor or Greater Manchester). The professor was asked about how to encourage people to carry on with social distancing. First she pointed out that poor people suffer disproportionately (perhaps influenced by Emily Maitlis’ introduction to the programme on Wednesday*). She then suggested**, in London for example, opening up the 45,000 acres of golf courses as well as the independent schools playing fields.
Andy Burnham agreed, saying the parks were open in Manchester and went so far as to suggest closing the roads in the city to allow people more space, not less. Professor Michie who specialises in Psychology, called it a problem of opportunity not motivation.
*https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000h3np/newsnight-09042020 – from about 13 minutes in.
**https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-emily-maitlis-newsnight-bbc-inequality-boris-johnson-a9456696.html
The key point this post misses is that the lockdown is not simply designed to reduce transmission of COVID19 but to reduce the “baseline load” on emergency services (esp hospital services) in general. E.g. By cutting the number of car journeys we have far fewer RTAs to deal with. Additionally, our health service is approximately resourced based on resident population not on visitor population.
Finally, the government’s strategy has been to have a single, simple message that applies to all; not a nuanced/caveated essay. It is widely acknowledged that a simple message is much more effective and having it apply to all maximises adherence.