Agh! No sooner had the first two stones been placed than the First Minister announced that the country was to go into "lockdown" mode, which involved, amongst other things, a severe restriction in travel, and a warning that people should not go into the mountains or hills, so that the necessity for rescue and front line medical personnel having to be deployed could be eliminated as near as possible.
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The Game was effectively kyboshed after this message from Scottish Mountain Rescue on Sunday 10 May 2020 about the current situation:
🔹Questions & Answers🔹
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*UPDATED*
Firstly we would like to continue to thank everyone for staying stay, local and for keeping our rescue teams quiet. It means more to us than you can know.
Only by acting as a community can we get ourselves back to a position where we can enjoy the hills together and we are very much missing the hills as much as everyone else.
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After today's announcements we wanted to clarify the situation in Scotland. Which is no change apart from you can now exercise in the same way as before more than once per day.
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Can we drive to the hills for our exercise?
The Scottish Government advice is clear, essential travel only, no driving for your exercise. Please note, the Prime Minister's announcement tonight on travelling to exercise applies to England only.
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What if I live local to a hill, can I go up then?
Slightly more complicated but essentially no, not up a larger hill, the advice is to stick to paths and tracks low down.
There will always be grey areas, but please do not try to interpret the advice in such a way as to enable you to continue with your hobby at the moment. Don't look for loopholes, think more of the spirit of what we're trying to achieve as a community.
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I’ve never needed to be rescued in years of being in the hills.
No one sets off for a day in the hills expecting to be rescued. However experienced and knowledgeable you may feel you are most rescues are the result of simple slips and trips.
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I am as likely to get injured at home doing DIY than in the hills.
Possibly, but the consequences of an injury are significantly greater in the hills. It’s a question of resources required. Mountain rescues are resource intensive.
If you are injured at home either you can transport yourself for treatment or if more serious you will be attended by 2 fully equipped ambulance crew in one vehicle.
It only takes one slip, trip or fall and our teams services will be required. That means 10, 20, 30 team members (depending on the incident) coming
to help, a helicopter crew coming to assist, an ambulance on standby, Police coordinating and before you know it you have brought up to 50 or more people out.
Even if teams have sufficient PPE, it is not designed for use in the outdoor environment and when undertaking hard physical activity. So you, the MR team and their household when they return home are at greater risk.
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So ask yourself two questions about your activity and where you undertake it:
1. Have I increased my level of risk unnecessarily?
2. What are the consequences of a rescue from this location?
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When this is all over we are very much looking forward to seeing you back in the hills.
Stay Safe, Stay Local, Stay Well
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#ScottishMR
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So, all we can do is stay at home and cool our heels until the lockdown restrictions are eased sufficiently to allow us back into the hills, and back to A Game of Stones. Meanwhile, Wilson StoneArt can get on with producing the stones!
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On 29th May, phase 1 of four-phase "road map" planning
the easing of the lockdown came into effect, thus allowing
us to begin to get back into the hills.
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Phase 2 was announced on 19th June with the guidance posted on the Home page of this website. Unfortunately, having got started for real, I had by this time developed shingles (actually, probably not - much worse!) which overnight laid me low and curtailed any agos400 activity apart from painting stones!
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9th July saw the announcement of the Phase 3 plans, as now posted on the Home page. Unfortunately, the personal fitness issues have not yet cleared up, so no new stones have been placed recently (although quite a few have been prepared in anticipation of things getting back to some sort of normality in the near future).
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