UKC

Who is the bright spark at alpkit who dreamed up the idea that it would be fun for lots of people to travel to tremadog to find a voucher they've placed on a route there? The ignorance of this is just dumbfounding! The whole of Wales is in lockdown. Travel  to Wales is not permitted and travel within Wales is only permitted for essential purposes. I.e. not even to exercise! Check the rules and watch the news guys, there's a lot happening you seem to be oblivious to!!

Get a grip alpkit, apologise for this ridiculous error and also state that the voucher will be null and void.

Nadolig llawen!

I can't find anything on the internet anywhere publicising the locations for the treasure hunt, apart from having a member of staff living nearby.  All I can find is instructions not to break any Covid rules.  

From what I can see exercise is permitted in Wales if you can walk to it.  

So presumably the voucher you mention is only valid to anyone who lives within walking distance.  

Well done for publicising it to a whole lot of people who don't live in walking distance by posting it here though. 

It does say that people should only take part if it's local to them and they follow the Covid regs.

I wouldn’t worry about it too much... it’s already been found.

On Christmas Curry?

And today they’re “encouraging” people to get out and about in Surrey. Also in Tier 4, albeit the English version. Maybe it would have been wise for them to just hold off this year?

I hope they have hidden something at Barnard Castle...

You'd need good eyesight to find it.

Tier 4 explicitly allows outdoor sport/recreation to continue. I struggle to see how people wandering around in wide open spaces hunting for a ticket is any significant Covid risk. We all need to do our bit by following the rules and minimising real transmission risks, not by getting puritanical about forms of fun that don't really pose an actual risk.

Surely local excercise is allowed?

It's good to see a company offering a bit of safe outdoor fun at a time when things are so grim.

It’s more the visuals that seem off to me rather than the actual practicalities. Advice in both locations so far boils down to “stay at home” (especially in Cymru where I believe even travel for exercise is pretty frowned upon atm).  Anything encouraging people to go outside seems against the grain of what should be happening. In a practical sense the Covid impact will be next to zero of course, it just “looks” wrong to me.

You can frown as much as you want but I'm going to continue to drive to local hills and crags since I don't see a significant covid risk associated with doing so.

Hanging off a cliff 300ft above the ground looks unsafe to most people but that doesn't mean it necessarily is. Climbers in particular should have a lot of experience making informed and realistic risk assessments.

Agreed but would you have been saying this back in April?

Not quite sure what your point is here. But I think my opinion probably would have been different back in April. For starters, the actual rules were different then and we knew much less about the disease and what is/isn't risky.

 No need to be quite so condescending. I too am continuing to go bouldering alone because the covid risk is low.  However, I a) live in tier 2 and b) am not a national outdoor company encouraging people to all head to the same spot.

I’m far from against getting out and about within the guidance. I am however not a fan of the running of this promotion at this time, when, in my opinion, entities with large audiences should not be actively encouraging people to travel around. 

You're coming across as extremely judgemental. If you're in tier 2 you don't live anywhere near Tremadog and yet you're presuming to tell us what is and isn't acceptable in Wales.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map

Gwynedd has one of the lowest infection rates in the whole of the UK.

You're posting in a public forum and contributing to the noise and moralising clamour. I really don't want us to go back to the days of curtain twitching and I'd rather just assume that everyone is doing their best for public health and their own mental health.

I'm not trying to be judgemental, apologies if I came across as such. I was simply sharing my opinion which resonates with the OPs. Running promotions like this just doesn't sit right with me at the moment, but clearly I am in the minority on this.

I lived in Wales for 10 years, and moved away about 15 months ago, and only because of work. I like to keep up to speed with what's going on as a result.I'm aware of the numbers in Gwynedd, and the disparity between them and the current regulations when contrasted with other areas in Wales and the UK.

I am also not a fan of "curtain twitching" as you so put it, rather I am concerned about the substantial increase in cases that's occurring nationally at the moment. As such, anything which can be percieved to be encouraging travel at the current time gets me a little on edge.

Edit to add: to me, it's very different going out and doing some exercise for your mental/physical health vs communicating with a mailing list of thousands and providing an incentive to go to one specific spot. The former I completely understand, the latter less so.

One thing we've learnt in the last week is that there is a new strain that appears to be more virulent than the known existing one. Therefore, is it really a good idea to be actively encouraging people to gather in one localised area when we don't know exactly how virulent it is and/or how it is transmitted, etc?
 

The new strain has already attracted a lot of attention and all indications are that it's more transmissible, certainly, but not by the many orders of magnitude that would be needed to turn distanced outdoor contact into a substantial risk. I will eat my climbing helmet if it transmits by a fundamentally different mechanism or starts regularly leaping between people more than a few metres apart in an outdoor setting.