Cycling dos and don'ts in a time of pandemic – how to be a responsible cyclist

Agreed. Even if it is necessarily arbitrary, just set clear rules - job done.

And made it clear he's happy to judge what the whole country are doing & consider making new laws about it, just by riding around near a shopping centre.

As regards exercise, there does not need to be any "travel" distance limit specified. They just need to stipulate that you must travel under your own power. Then the distance will be self-regulating. People could call it exercise if they wished.

In fact, that is pretty much how it is in the legislation. Then they muddied the water with loosely worded unenforceable "guidance", and left the police to deal with the mess.

I think I'm allowed to disagree with him BTW.  He's no better trained than I am, and I have the advantage of having done it for a fair bit longer than he has.

Of course, there is a way to tell which of us is right.  I'd not recommend it though.

no, but then we are left in a dilemma, as various police forces around the country are now "vowing" to issue more fines and interpret the guidance more strictly and have started writing in local newspapers, issuing tweets etc  warning you amongst other things not to travel to beauty spots to exercise, sticking rigidly to stay in your local area only whilst not defining what that means, and even some claiming theyll be randomly stopping people outside to determine if they are compliant with the rules and fining them if they arent, all while the government are already again leaking hints even stricter rules will be in place by Monday if Im reading the runes correctly.

so what do you do? carry on riding as per I think the vast majority of people have been doing in a sensible responsible way all through this, or just say the actual higher risk now is encountering a bored copper on a power trip and shut away the outside world until some semblance of sanity is restored.

The Regulations definitely don't mention distance from home.

I understand the argument you make, based on "reasonable excuse", but it is tenuous. If applied in the way you suggest, the rules become so vague that in many situations it's impossible for people to know whether they're committing an offence or not. According to your interpretation, it's up to the court to decide afterwards, and that's not good.

Where I live the roads are nearly as busy as normal. Even if they decided to "enforce", the police couldn't stop more than a tiny fraction of drivers.

Another aspect is that it's pretty pointless criminalising people for going for a walk outdoors at a reservoir. They are not at risk of getting or transmitting Covid, so fining them is petty and bloody-minded.

I've heard North Yorks police say they are focusing on indoor gatherings, which makes far more sense.

Aren't we conflating 2 ideas. The definition of exercise and whether it was reasonable to travel to take that exercise. Not helped by the ambiguous guidance on travel. As you say both of these ideas are specific to the individual. I think the mistake the Derbyshire Police force is they targeted popular touristy car parks and made no judgement about whether a stroll with a mate was really exercise, whether it was reasonable to travel the distance in question or even if it was your one and only exercise that day. It's not helped by the fact one of the women brought in the question of the benefit of meeting up with her mate on her mental health. That's another topic entirely. Looking at the roads this morning I think they would have been better off setting up road blocks and interviewing all road users. If it is not 'reasonable' to drive to a park that is further away than your nearest park then it cannot be necessary to drive past a Tesco's to get to an Asda. I personally will be starting all exercise from my front door and keep my riding distances down. Not difficult in this weather.

I should add that my local park continues to offer free parking and has its own coffee shop open for takeaway. I have pointed out that this seems to be facilitating breaches of the guidance.

Peple are allowed to visit open spaces. Car parks are allowed to be open, take away food and drink is allowed.

Which item did you leave out that causes you concern ?

Tbf, I'm just trying to get my own thoughts on the subject in order. I am disappointed by the levels of traffic about this morning. I wasn't trying to make a judgement. That's down to individual circumstance. I was suggesting that if the police are going to make a judgement they should target all road users not just those taking a walk. As was already stated the legality/interpretation is down to the courts if anybody wants to take it that far. With regard parks being open and free to cars. My local councillors advertised (on Facebook) that my local park, which is technically in the next village and therefore not strictly 'local', remained open to cars and that the cafe was open for takeaway, I pointed out that they were telling me to stay home and facilitating non locals to visit at the same time. We have plenty of open space in the town albeit not as scenic and potentially muddier than the park so for the vast majority they don't need to drive to the park to take exercise and it's easily accessible to joggers regardless.

I think many have forgotten the basic requirement which is to stay at home. There seems to be too much of 'what can I do next?'.
Some of the travel is due to more shops being open, click and collect, takeaway food.
Why do garden centres need to be open in January? How many people are actually only buying seeds and bulbs as opposed to sale tat ?

Thank you hirsute. I think this clarifies my thinking. My gut reaction was that Derbyshire Police were totally wrong but I thought my reaction was about issuing fines where no law was clearly breached. My real issue is that they targeted a low risk activity that has little economic value. They didn't stake out shopping centres and garden centres to check that people were only buying necessities. Worse still those that went to a garden centre to have a stroll round and didn't buy anything. This doesn't feel like an apolitical choice.

'What can I do, without breaching the rules and without creating a risk of transmitting Covid?' is a fair question in my opinion, and it's natural people will ask it.

I understand, it's a bad situation we're in. But we've all put our lives on hold for nearly a year now, and not all of us want to go further than necessary.

Indeed, but do you think that is the question people are actually asking themselves?

The law does not specify a distance limit for travel because the law does not say anything about travel. People have simply inserted the travel element themselves, probably because they are incapable of imagining things any other way, such is the hold that car culture has over them. Going out for some physical exercise? Sure, how far shall we drive?

How far can I fly to take my exercise? The law does not specify a limit. Put it that way and it seems ridiculous. But travel by car is assumed unless specifically excluded.

Yet the law does actually exclude it. It starts with a blanket ban - don't leave home (so that includes travel) - and then fails to re-admit travel, so far as taking exercise is concerned.

Yet still people just assume car travel is a given, a universal default, it's simply held as self-evident. So the only question now troubling them is, "how far?"

So what about going to the supermarket or doctors? Indeed the law does not tell you how to get there, but it does say that you can be there. At that point it must be true that you are allowed to go from home to venue, and it does not restrict your choice of transport.

But that argument does not apply to exercise. Because the law only says that it is an excuse to be outside if it is reasonably necessary to be outside to take exercise. So if you are apprehended by the law whilst outside, your defence can be that for the exercise you are engaged in it is reasonably necessary to be outside. You can't say that if you are in a car.

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Yet the law does actually exclude it. It starts with a blanket ban - don't leave home (so that includes travel) - and then fails to re-admit travel, so far as taking exercise is concerned.

It doesn't re-admit exercise per se either. What it re-admits is being outside for the purposes of exercise, insofar as that is reasonably necessary. So exercising outside is legal if it is reasonably necessary both for you to exercise, and to do so outside. Travelling in order to exercise is legal if it is reasonably necessary for you to exercise, to do so outside, and to do so in a location that requires you to travel to it.

It's a defensible position that it's never reasonably necessary to travel to another location in order to exercise, but it's a matter of subjective judgement that others are likely to disagree with.

I know we've argued over this already, but I still fail to see where you get travel from. The law asks only, why you are outside? It offers a drop-down menu of allowable responses. One of them is, "to take exercise for which it is reasonably necessary to be outside". And that's it. It's not asking whether the exercise reasonably requires you to travel, that's not on the menu.

And to be clear on some of your other points, the law does not ask whether, nor require that, the exercise be reasonable or necessary, nor that it is reasonably necessary to take outdoors exercise.

Because the travel is for the purposes of exercise.

It doesn't ask whether you are exercising; it asks whether you are outside for the purpose of exercising. That doesn't just mean doing the exercise itself; it means anything you need to do in order to do the exercise. In the same way that if you are travelling to a shop to buy essentials, you are outside for the purpose of purchasing essentials, even though you're not actually purchasing them at the time.

If you are, then it asks whether that was reasonably necessary, which is where you could argue that there are no cases where it's reasonably necessary to travel in order to exercise. But it also means that others could argue that there are no cases where it's reasonably necessary to be outside to exercise at all ("I mean, there's that there Joe Wicks, isn't there?") or that it's reasonably necessary to drive 50 miles to the coast ("It's vital for my mental health to see the sea regularly").

I think you're in the realms of fantasy here, Corporal Jones.

Nonsense.