Travel during lockdown 2.0: Over the hills, but not too far away

In these strange times, most weeks are a bit weird. But this one has been especially odd. Last weekend I flew to Berlin for the opening ceremony of the German capital’s new airport – a mere nine years late (Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg, not me).

I had planned a Saturday evening feast beside the Spree at the splendid Zollpackhof restaurant – a riverside location that was frozen on the Cold War frontline for four decades and is now back in boisterous business.

But my arrival coincided with the first leaks of winter about Lockdown 2.0 in England. The night out turned into four gruelling hours of assessing what the government’s latest U-turn meant for travellers negotiating the increasingly tricky folds in the Corona Curtain.

Waiters provided regular top-ups of beer to fuel these journalistic endeavours. But their perplexed glances suggested this was one of the more dysfunctional Saturday nights out they had witnessed in a while.

Back in Britain on Tuesday, my heart skipped a beat when the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020 were finally published, and I could figure out what constituted “other legally permitted exemptions” beyond work, education and exercise.

The main “reasonable excuses” are for medical treatment, for legal proceedings and visiting close family members who are in hospital. (The law does not prescribe a limit to how far you may travel for these purposes, and if it requires an overnight stay or an international journey that is also legitimate.)

Along with 56 million other residents of England who fervently hope not to avail of these exemptions, four weeks of staying at home awaited. So on Wednesday I made a great escape for a final day venturing over the hills and far away.

The adventure began optimistically at the world’s finest railway terminal, London St Pancras, on the little-known 5.52am to Derby (a very reasonable £15 if you book through Megatrain).

The pre-dawn departure went on a go-slow around Wellingborough, which cost me an hour’s freedom on the countdown to the midnight curfew. But eventually I made it to Middleton Top: southern terminus of the Pennine Bridleway, location for an early 19th-century steam engine, and – crucially – on the High Peak Trail.

The trackbed of the former Cromford and High Peak Railway leads cyclists and hikers magically across the roof of England. In the course of 12 northwesterly miles, you are treated to a breathtaking succession of landscapes. 

Autumn has anointed the woodlands with maximum glory, while hills embroidered by drystone walls retreat to distant horizons.

Right now, our horizons have never seemed narrower. Yet whether you are fortunate enough to live in or around the Peak District, or (like me) are now confined to south London, you have a right “to take exercise outside”. Safely and responsibly, use it to celebrate your own outdoors, great and small. But not too far away.