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Exercise should be undertaken locally – as close as possible to the home.
In general this should not involve people driving to a location away from home for this purpose.
The rules state: “No journeys of any significant distance should be taken, for example, just in order to exercise in the countryside or at beauty spots.”
People with specific health or mobility issues may, however, need to travel from their home in order to be able to exercise.
In these circumstances the journey should be to the nearest convenient accessible location and no long journeys should be undertaken absolutely absolutely necessary.
Doing other things while exercising
The rules say that leaving your home to exercise should not be used as an excuse to undertake other activity.
Going for a walk and then having a picnic or spending a prolonged period on a park bench, for example, is not considered to be exercise and is not intended to be a reasonable excuse.
However, combining exercise with walking a dog or going to a shop to buy food, for example, is considered to be reasonable.
Part of the reason for these clarified rules is to specifically address people traveling too far from their homes. First Minister Mark Drakeford said the rules were being made stricter to “address challenges being faced in parts of the country”.
“This will help clarify that people who leave their home with a reasonable excuse – such as going out to shop for food, for healthcare or for work – cannot remain outside to do other things, “the Welsh Government spokesman said.
You should only leave the house for very limited reasons, referred to in the Welsh Government regulations as a reasonable excuse, which include:
- shopping for basic necessities or supplies, for example food, medicine, and essential household maintenance, we encourage everyone to make this as infrequently as possible
to take one form of exercise a day, for example a run, walk, or cycle – alone or with members of your household to visit your GP or local health services including the dentist
- to provide care or to help a vulnerable person, this includes getting food or medicines for them
- help the NHS by donating blood
- to avoid injury or illness
- traveling to and from work, but only where it is not reasonabl y practicable to work from home
- to attend a funeral if you are invited by the person organizing the funeral, or the carer of a person attending the funeral, although this is subject to limits on numbers who can attend, in order to ensure that 2 meter distancing can be kept.
The Welsh Government has also asked the four police forces in Wales to provide further advice about whether existing provisions intended to prevent people from traveling to second homes in Wales need to be further strengthened.
But while the rules are being tightened up in some areas, they are being relaxed in others. A spokesman for the Welsh Government said the stay-at-home regulations have been revised in Wales “to continue to prevent the spread of coronavirus.”
People with particular health conditions or disabilities will be allowed to leave home to exercise more than once a day. This will help families with children with learning disabilities and autism in particular.
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