We are free......

[hilldweller]

Matlock Bath - usual number of bikes for a sunny day. 3 fish n chip shops doing takeaways and two ice cream parlours open.

All bikers behaving very sensibly.

I'd forgotten how beautiful Via Gella is, as good a road as you'll get to ride a bike on.

But there was one ! I saw a Triumph Tractor parked and a bit later I saw it with two up and he was bouncing it quite violently up the opposite pavement. It would seem he could not do a U turn with a Triumph Tractor on a normal main road.

For a nice while, CV19 did not exist.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I'd forgotten how beautiful Via Gella is, as good a road as you'll get to ride a bike on.

I don't think I've been along that road in 20 years, it was a favourite when we lived in Sheffield

[Bigyin]

Matlock Bath - usual number of bikes for a sunny day. 3 fish n chip shops doing takeaways and two ice cream parlours open.

For a nice while, CV19 did not exist.

Maybe its just me...... i really cannot understand in the current environment the need to ride to a place known for a group of people congregating and then marvel at the fact lots of people are congregating. Its the equivalent of jumping into a petrie dish and hoping something doesnt stick

Ride your bikes......as much as you like, where you like..... enjoy riding the bikes as its what we do.

But why does the need to stop in places where other people on bikes stop. It just pisses off the locals and gives us all a bad name. Even pre Covid19 i struggled to "get" the bike meet thing and would rather be riding than standing round in a car park looking at other peoples bikes, The last meet i went to was a weekly thing locally and i went once just to have a look and i was bored shitless in 20 minutes and left. I then spent an hour riding some superb empty roads as all the other bikes were in a pub car park miles away

[Skub]

Maybe its just me...... i really cannot understand in the current environment the need to ride to a place known for a group of people congregating and then marvel at the fact lots of people are congregating. Its the equivalent of jumping into a petrie dish and hoping something doesnt stick

Ride your bikes......as much as you like, where you like..... enjoy riding the bikes as its what we do.

But why does the need to stop in places where other people on bikes stop. It just pisses off the locals and gives us all a bad name. Even pre Covid19 i struggled to "get" the bike meet thing and would rather be riding than standing round in a car park looking at other peoples bikes, The last meet i went to was a weekly thing locally and i went once just to have a look and i was bored shitless in 20 minutes and left. I then spent an hour riding some superb empty roads as all the other bikes were in a pub car park miles away

I hear ya Yin.

I mostly ride alone now.Some of the behaviour patterns you mention are the reason. Some folk can't ride 5 miles without needing a smoke/piss or coffee,then reliving the tales of great exploits.(which never happened) I don't do big miles any more,but I cba with that schitt. I ride from my door and back to my door,other than fuel stops.

It's difficult to find companions who ride the way you ride on any given spur of the moment,plus bikes never were about the social thing for me anyway.

[hilldweller]

But why does the need to stop in places where other people on bikes stop.

Bikes are there because they are nice places. Matlock Bath is surrounded by grand roads and when we need a break it has top fish n chips and a walk along the river.

Same Devil's Bridge, but not as good as Matlock.

Same Snake Pass, which has a great picnic area, decent food, good toilets and a walk up to the Dambusters dam.

Same The Ponderosa, with totally excellent roads all around it.

Same Southport.

All these places a short ride for me - yippppeeeeeee.

[Fruity]

so yesterday I went out for a 100 mile run. Reasonably sedate as farmers have got used to not competing with any traffic on the local roads but it was very odd being in the countryside again.

Ride safe everyone.

It's not just farmers, but wildlife too. We've lately had a bit of a spike with deer involved in collisions, on our local back roads - including the A1(M)

[WelshDragon]

Well first ride out since last November. It was good to be out but like others we tend to go where no one else is, generally some remote NT or CADW car park and enjoy our own company and a picnic. Not these days. No car parks open and too many cars, loads of boy racers, walkers and cyclists about. Far fewer bikes than I expected. We did manage to find a bench and were able to watch the world go by but it just wasn't the same. I'll be glad when the cafes, pubs etc open and everyone bogs off back to them!

[hilldweller]

Matlock has just been on the local news. Full of bikes. If you got a tape measure out most of the people were probably 2m apart but its not doing a lot of good for the public's perception of motorcyclists <sigh>

I'll bet the cafe owners were not the ones complaining.

[millemille]

I drove through Matlock Bath at lunchtime, on the way home from the workshop, and there were nigh on 100 bikes and riders there. Some on the river side of the road and obviously keeping their distance from others, but the vast majority were milling around outside the chip shops with no sign of any social distancing.

There were a couple of TrafPol there, looked to me like they were writing up FPN's/VRN's.

Given that the police are now effectively powerless to police anything like the situation at Matlock Bath through the Coronavirus legislation I would guess that they are seeking to make going to Matlock Bath such a fucking painful experience if your bike is not 100% legal that no one wants to go*.

I fear that what is being seen at Matlock Bath is what will happen everywhere within a couple of months; society, the majority who sit in the middle of the bell curve for intelligence/morality/empathy, will decide - without conscious thought or reasoned process - that they will not accept any change to their lifestyle and actions from those of pre-coronavirus times. Politicians will be forced to cede to the masses and it will be up to those who are uncomfortable with how society is behaving to act as individuals to look after themselves.

Those at Matlock Bath who are ignoring social distancing guidelines and choosing to interpret the government's guidance to their benefit are not stupid, per se. They can afford to buy and run a motorbike and it's difficult to do that without some degree of intelligence, but have decided for reasons best known to themselves to behave as they are. I suspect it's because Coronavirus hasn't affected them, or anyone they know, seriously enough?





*Kent police did this back in the 90's when the traditional Wednesday night meet ups, Oakdene/Merry Chest/Gibraltar Arms, got so outrageous with stunting and chases and resulting accidents (I think it culminated in a accident that killed, or seriously injured, someone who had nothing to do with the meet up) and those causing the problems wouldn't listen to reason. They were stopping every single bike and going over them with a fine tooth comb and woe betide you if your was even remotely non-legal.

[hilldweller]

t have decided for reasons best known to themselves to behave as they are. I suspect it's because Coronavirus hasn't affected them, or anyone they know, seriously enough?

The way it has panned out in the UK is not like the media would have us believe. They go on and on quoting the biggest numbers they can lay their hands on but so far all those new hospitals have gone unused and some NHS staff are dying of boredom.

Sweden treated their people as adults.

So is this the backlash ?

It's a strange old virus, many just brushing it off.

But we can't go on in lockdown, it's financial meltdown, we've got to take more risks or the country is finished..

[millemille]

t have decided for reasons best known to themselves to behave as they are. I suspect it's because Coronavirus hasn't affected them, or anyone they know, seriously enough?

The way it has panned out in the UK is not like the media would have us believe. They go on and on quoting the biggest numbers they can lay their hands on but so far all those new hospitals have gone unused and some NHS staff are dying of boredom.

Sweden treated their people as adults.

So is this the backlash ?

It's a strange old virus, many just brushing it off.

But we can't go on in lockdown, it's financial meltdown, we've got to take more risks or the country is finished..

The media are quoting numbers that the government, or internationally recognised organisations like Johns Hopkins University, produce. I don't, personally, believe there is any deliberate, widespread misrepresentation on the part of the mainstream media.

Even though somewhere between 34.5k and >50k people have died from COVID-19 in the uk, from the government's own figures, that's "only" around 0.05% of the population. So the chances of someone directly knowing a person who has died from it are very low.

I don't directly know anyone who's been hospitalised with it either.

I do know several people who have had it and have had a very hard time of it, my wife included (showed first symptoms on the 19th of March and is going back to work for the first time tomorrow, but is still not 100% recovered. Ambulances to the house twice due to chest pains/breathing problems, several courses of steroids to help with her lung function, as she's asthmatic, and really bad post viral infection fatigue).

What isn't getting the coverage it deserves is what's happening in care and nursing homes. My wife works at a nursing home in Darley Dale. There were about 55 residents when she went off sick, there are now 25. They've had 30 die in 8 weeks. Normal death rate? 1 a month.

It's very difficult to look at other countries and how they've handled/responded to Coronavirus and compare that with the UK.

I don't know if you've had any experience with Swedes and Sweden? I have. I've been there for work, dealing with two companies in the rail industry, about a dozen times over the last 20 years and they are of a very, very different mindset to British people. Culturally they are as far away from us the Japanese are, despite it only being a half day journey to get there.

Very staid on the whole, won't be rushed to make a decision, individuals do not make decisions - everything has to be agreed by committee, they play both sides of the field (you can see why they supported both sides during the second world war when you've dealt with them for a while), work life balance is the MOST important thing to them, they happily pay a rate of taxes that just wouldn't be accepted in this country, family is very important to them - but not the wider, generational family. Their immediate family; spouse and children. Kids leave home at a very young age, compared to the uk, and move into their own place. That's one of the reasons that Sweden's infection rate was comparatively low, because large numbers of young Swedes live on their own.

[Gedge]

t have decided for reasons best known to themselves to behave as they are. I suspect it's because Coronavirus hasn't affected them, or anyone they know, seriously enough?

The way it has panned out in the UK is not like the media would have us believe. They go on and on quoting the biggest numbers they can lay their hands on but so far all those new hospitals have gone unused and some NHS staff are dying of boredom.

Sweden treated their people as adults.

So is this the backlash ?

It's a strange old virus, many just brushing it off.

But we can't go on in lockdown, it's financial meltdown, we've got to take more risks or the country is finished..

I do agree about the figures in at least one regard . The government gives out daily the number of new cases, the number of people in intensive care and the number that have died. At no point have they given out the number of people that have recovered and been released from hospital, nor have they attempted to give the number that are believed to have had the disease and have no way resumed normal life ( ie recovered) . I can only assume that those figures are actually good and they are concerned it would lead to people ignoring the SD guidelines ( more than they already appear to be , going on what I saw yesterday .

[Horse]

There are a lot of nasty people out there - take that nurse somewhere where they slashed her tyres because they thought she was breaking the lockdown.

A nurse I know was walking out to her car a couple of weeks ago, heading off for a night shift. Got yelled at to 'stay at home'.

I don't know what sort of work she does now, but previously she was out in West Africa when Ebola was rife.

[Gimlet]

Unless there's a 100% effective vaccine available very soon, at some point every healthy person in the country is going to have to have a dose of C19 and get it over with.
The difficulty is protecting those who aren't healthy. Either way we're going to have to learn to live with it.

[Fruity]

That's one of the reasons that Sweden's infection rate was comparatively low, because large numbers of young Swedes live on their own.

And there's only just over ten million of them.

[Skub]

Unless there's a 100% effective vaccine available very soon, at some point every healthy person in the country is going to have to have a dose of C19 and get it over with.
The difficulty is protecting those who aren't healthy. Either way we're going to have to learn to live with it.

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that having Covid19 gives you any future immunity,'getting over it' to achieve the herd immunity thing may not work, so yes indeed,we may have to live/die with it.

Too many unknowns at the moment.

[millemille]

That's one of the reasons that Sweden's infection rate was comparatively low, because large numbers of young Swedes live on their own.

And there's only just over ten million of them.

And about eleventy billion trees.

I used to fly into Stockholm and then drive about 3hrs north to a tiny little town called Vika.

Now, you drive for 3hrs in the UK and the scenery changes, you can tell you've gone across a fair chunk of a country.

In Sweden? Nope, it's the road then a verge and then the edge of the forest. For mile after mile after mile. Every so often there's a small clearing as the trees rollback a bit and there's a few houses and then the tree's are back. You could have just driven around the block for 3 hours and it would have looked and felt exactly the same. After a few days of being out there your eye's can't focus more than 50 yards, because that's as far as you can see in any direction.

Although, this was the view from the factory we were working at....

[Bigyin]

What isn't getting the coverage it deserves is what's happening in care and nursing homes. My wife works at a nursing home in Darley Dale. There were about 55 residents when she went off sick, there are now 25. They've had 30 die in 8 weeks. Normal death rate? 1 a month.

Just told my missus that as she walked out the door to start her night shift as a Senior carer at one of the local care homes and her reply was "Fucking hell, thats horrific, they must have had someone with it sent in from hospital in early March"

Her care home is still symptom free with no deaths which they base purely on the fact they refused to take any patients from hospital unless they were tested and cleared of the virus

Hope your wife can cope with the mental aspects of so many missing residents since she was last there

[millemille]

What isn't getting the coverage it deserves is what's happening in care and nursing homes. My wife works at a nursing home in Darley Dale. There were about 55 residents when she went off sick, there are now 25. They've had 30 die in 8 weeks. Normal death rate? 1 a month.

Just told my missus that as she walked out the door to start her night shift as a Senior carer at one of the local care homes and her reply was "Fucking hell, thats horrific, they must have had someone with it sent in from hospital in early March"

Her care home is still symptom free with no deaths which they base purely on the fact they refused to take any patients from hospital unless they were tested and cleared of the virus

Hope your wife can cope with the mental aspects of so many missing residents since she was last there

They had a few residents in and out of hospital in late Feb and early March so it's entirely possible. Bare in mind it's a nursing, not care, home so the people there all had underlying medical conditions which meant hospital visits and stays were common place.

She's not going back there, her job - activities coordinator (one of half a dozen or so at the home) - doesn't exist there any more because of the lack of residents. She's going to a care home - not nursing - elsewhere in the group. That home hasn't had a single case.

[Bigyin]

Matlock Bath - usual number of bikes for a sunny day. 3 fish n chip shops doing takeaways and two ice cream parlours open.

All bikers behaving very sensibly.

For a nice while, CV19 did not exist.

Aside from being on bikes when we want here is an alternative viewpoint

This is what the locals think of all the individuals on bikes who decided to congregate where all the individuals on bikes usually meet when there isnt a contagious disease that can kill you by drowning in your own lungs

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/l ... 7av0Vzan7Y