When I heard that the First Minister was going to permit golf courses to open last weekend, without also opening up the rest of the countryside at the same time, I thought she had taken leave of her senses. Or had received some extremely bad advice. Surely it was absolutely obvious that this would create extreme crowding problems elsewhere as the large numbers of people who had been walking on golf courses for the last two months would then be displaced to other locations?
Rights of public access apply to golf courses but these have to take account of those who are playing golf. Under normal circumstances that works well but when very large numbers need to take access at the same time as the golf course is packed with golfers, from dawn to dusk, an impossible situation is created. No wonder most of those who had been taking access, many enjoying the beautiful natural environment of these courses for the first time, had to go somewhere else instead.
And when the somewhere else, if you live in the Glasgow conurbation, is obviously the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, allowing for a bit of flexibility over the 5 mile travel advice, that increases the potential parking and crowding problems there. Add to that the ridiculous decision to keep all the car parks and toilets in the national park closed, despite the Park’s Chief Executive, Gordon Watson, having had two months to work out how to manage those facilities once lockdown was eased, you have a recipe for chaos. Mr Watson’s explanation of his failure to properly plan for reopening was an example of amateurish Scottish countryside management at its worst. And why the Chief Constable, in his explanation of the challenges his officers faced last weekend, did not point the finger of blame at the golf course opening, is mystifying.
Both the First Minister and Chief Constable have been generous in their praise of the Scottish population and the extremely high levels of compliance with Covid – 19 restrictions. But why will they not trust us to go out into the countryside for the day, keep 2 metres apart and wash our hands afterwards? It is a fundamental principle for any government dealing with countryside access that dispersed rather than concentrated access is best for the physical and mental health of its citizens and for control of a disease like coronavirus. If England can do it, why not Scotland?
The First Minister needs to announce, this week, that the whole of the Scottish road network will be open to all citizens from midnight on Friday, along with all public car parks and toilets. Otherwise the media discussion next week will once again be dominated by all the weekend’s bogies.
Thank you Dave for this article…On our walk this morning we noticed that several areas on one of our local East Neuk golf courses has been “roped off” .Presumably to stop access ,folks have been pushing buggies, cycling,walking etc on areas of this course for the weeks we have been under ” lockdown”. Whilst I would agree that some of the grass is worn- we have had no rain to speak of during the past 6/7 weeks, this action by the golf club is I feel, confrontational and probably in contravention of our access rights in Scotland. The golf course is still not really ” busy” with only a few 2 people groups actually playing. The path we have to follow now causes the 2 metre distancing advice big problems!
Why is it deemed acceptable for a golf club car park to be full to overflowing (as seen this week) but most other car parks/laybys are being kept closed, allegedly to prevent this same situation occurring? There are many car parks, especially those operated by FLS, are not busy even in high season but they are coming under the same blanket closure rules. The more places that are open, the more options people have and the less busy each one will be.
I wonder how many private golf club members live within the 5 miles of their course….many will likely disregard the Govt’s request.
I am from Troon originally and generally in Ayrshire you could drive to five courses within five miles. This won’t be the case in all areas of course, but I think you’d be surprised how often people will be members of their local course rather than travel. The same will go for tennis. Counter this against the multiple people up Ben Wyvis on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Car park apparently rammed all three days. So unless everyone who lives in Garve decided to park there for the day it is ALL people who have traveled outwith the five mile guidance and ignoring the information shared by the local MRT.
Sturgeon has just said “If it feels as if your life is getting back to normal you need to look at what you are doing”.
Nothing to do with whether or not it actually increases risk, we are supposed to be suffering. Closed car parks are a very visible symbol.
Dave, I feel you’re being somewhat selective in your argument here, even though I agree with some of what you have said. Golf and tennis are single activities that given precautions can clearly be carried out on a socially distanced basis, but will have people nearby in case of emergency. Both are almost exclusively carried out at private members clubs who will have gone through extensive risk assessments and engagement with single administrative bodies (e.g. Royal and Ancient or the Lawn Tennis Association), who will have direct lines of communication to relevant government bodies.
Unfortunately it’s simply not as easy when it comes to the outdoors and I don’t buy the argument that it’s as easy as opening a golf course or tennis club. There are a multitude of activities (walking, scrambling, climbing, bouldering, paddling, bird-watching etc), carried out on land owned by god-knows-who that have their own administrative bodies, risks and quirks. Add into this the role of mountain rescue and their relationships with whoever delivers air aid services in the area, and you have a huge jumble of competing interests and views that can’t be easily summarised into a coherent message.
People who I consider friends have (in my opinion) exercised very poor judgement in going up corbetts and munros during lockdown, using the argument that they chose safe hills and easy routes. Now in Phase 1, the five mile guidance has been almost entirely ignored not just by those self-proclaimed safety experts above, but by everyone. I live in a small community near Inverness and the voices and concerns of people directly affected by a influx of non-residents need to be held loud and clear, particularly in remote rural areas. People should stay within their own communities and accept that at the current time the situation is not ideal, but will get better over time. I feel very sorry for those who live in city centres and don’t have easy access to green spaces and recreation opportunities, particularly those from vulnerable backgrounds, but the cities have also been worst affected by covid-19 so the risk of spreading into rural communities is high. Even though some people will not get out of the car, park remotely and not see others, the message is sends out is counter to the effort required to control coronavirus.
Finally, you ask why can’t we do the same in England? Here’s why: https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/18488979.problems-hit-crowds-head/ This could be the scene along honeypots like North Coast 500 unless people manage their desires to be in remote outdoor spaces for a bit longer. I desperately wish we were in a situation like New Zealand, but the fact of the matter is we’re not, and people and governments should respond accordingly.
As a final note – none of this is in any way condoning any local restriction of access, which should be reported to the local access officer, as I have done on several occasions since lockdown started.
Thanks Stephen for these comments and the link to the England situation. I noticed that the Lake District National Park CEO emphasised that “parts of the Lake District were busy over the weekend but overall visitor numbers were significantly lower than they usually are” and the Director of Public Health emphasised that the two key issues were adherence to the physical distancing requirement (2 metres) and hygiene (hand washing etc) guidelines. Exactly – photos of overcrowding in particular locations does not give a proper picture of the overall situation and loads of badly parked cars and disgusting piles of litter have little to do with the actual control of this virus. While these management problems, plus locked toilets etc, need sorting I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that they are responsible for a single case of disease transfer, when compared to crowded planes, trains, buses, shops, cinemas, football stadiums, hospitals and care homes. We need to deal effectively with the actual problem not what politicians imagine is the problem. I dealt with an equivalent situation in 2001 during the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak. The blanket restrictions favoured by politicians and public bodies which closed down the countryside, because they all wanted to be seen to be doing something “useful”, were NOT required, according to my direct conversations and meetings with the veterinary experts in charge of FMD control. We have not learnt from these mistakes and are well on the way to a health and economic disaster of unprecedented scale – ask anyone waiting for cancer treatment or a rural tourism operator with no idea of how to survive the coming winter. The FM needs to get the public road network fully open by this weekend for day trips by everyone and build confidence in rural communities for the full return of overnight stays by mid July at the very latest. Remember, Scottish schools go back on 11 August, we have an extremely narrow window (unlike England) in which to save the bulk of Scottish tourism.
Dave, thanks for your reply. I couldn’t disagree more with your proposals to be honest and I think there’s little chance of the FM opening the road network this weekend for day trips, for which I’m thankful. Of course there are lessons to be learned from foot and mouth but we’re talking about a fundamentally different proposition here, and I think conflating these issues is potentially dangerous. We have much more to learn from how other countries in a similar position to us have tackled Covid-19, and the Swedish health expert responsible for their more laissez faire attitude acknowledged this week it has resulted in more people dying than should have. People here and abroad have demonstrated with their actions that many seem incapable of observing adequate social distancing and therefore the measures you have suggested pose a serious threat to remote rural communities. Undoubtedly there are businesses that will suffer and fail as a result of this, but the survival of those businesses should not be prioritised over the health and welfare of people. I think in some time your proposals could be justified but I believe we’re a very long way from that happening just now. Time will tell, but I think we’re some distance from having this properly under control.
Thanks Stephen. I agree that it is very unlikely that the FM will announce the full opening up of the road network this weekend. But few people seem to realise that the current restrictions on road use are planned to stay in place all the way to the end of phase 2, which could be mid July or later. That will be far too late, providing that the R number is still below 1 and test and protect is working well. And I agree that we should learn from other countries , especially Scandinavia. Some of what I said in my post is based on conversations over the last few weeks with my brother who lives in Sweden and my son who lives in Norway. Both countries have done far better than the UK in control of the virus and protection of the economy. And I understand that the high death rate in Sweden is not due to their relaxed arrangements over public access to the countryside; it is due to failures in the management of the virus in care homes, as in the UK. In Norway there are now doubts about the necessity of full lockdown: http://www.spectator.co.uk/article/norway-health-chief-lockdown-was-not-needed-to-tame-covid. All the evidence in the UK now appears to suggest there will be a negligible increase in risk if we fully open up the road network in Scotland, for single day use, providing that is coupled with repeated emphasis on the physical distancing and personal hygiene requirements. Moving to that position at the start of phase 2 will then help to build public confidence for a fuller opening of facilities by mid July. And Foot and Mouth Disease does have some parallels. We need to avoid the type of situation which occurred at Easter 2001 – the vets isolated the diseased farms to a limited number of locations in the Snowdonia National Park, so that the Park could be open for Easter, apart from those locations. But the Park Authority insisted that the whole Park should remain in lockdown. They were giving too much weight to the unjustified concerns of farmers, ignoring the scientific evidence and operational requirements of those in charge of the disease control measures. A similar process is evident today from my short but frequent journeys around the Kinross area in the last two months. This misunderstanding of disease control requirements needs to stop, both here and elsewhere in Scotland.
Whomsoever claims ownership of the land makes not one jot of difference to our right to walk over it.
MRT teams should shut their face and stop bending the knee to Government in the hope of larger handouts. Who put them in charge of us?
There is not a single case of Coronavirus transmission form anyone carrying out any outdoor pursuit in Scotland. If there was then it would be used as evidence to justify placing us under house arrest. But there isn’t so you can forget yourself and that specious line of shroud-waving justification.
There is not and never has been any limit on how far you can travel for exercise. There is no 5 mile limit. Stop spreading fake news.
PS. Bring back TAC!
I am afraid that while the 5 mile limit is only advisory as far as the Coronavirus regulations are concerned, Police Scotland have decided otherwise, see the comments to the other thread:
http://parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2020/06/01/covid-19-access-rights-the-missed-opportunity-and-the-failures-in-visitor-management/
The average population density of Scotland is 178 per sq.mi., England 671 per sq.mi., the UK as a whole 727 per sq.mi., London 13,210 per sq.mi. approximately. Tell me out of these four areas where you would feel safest and therefore which could have allowed open air access most easily and soonest? I live in the North East of England, which everyone knows has had the highest number of deaths through SARS Coronavirus 2, with a population density of about 800 per sq.mi. My own opinion is that this is due to underlying health problems caused by the strong industrial heritage, i.e. shipbuilding, mining, steelworks etc, and not so much due to the higher population density than the UK average or the lack of physical distancing by its inhabitants. I suspect that areas of Wales, Glasgow and to a lesser extent Edinburgh would show a similar trend for exactly the same reason. Fresh air and open spaces aren’t the killer, it’s people being concentrated in small areas and enclosed spaces e.g. the Tube etc in London, passing the disease on to each other no matter how much they try to avoid it. Lets get the great outdoors open again.