Hampton Court Palace

This morning Gavin ran in the Hampton Court Palace Half Marathon. Luckily it was not cancelled due to the Coronavirus, as some other ones he has coming up have been cancelled as has the London Marathon. I went up later with Xena to watch the end and then we walked around Bushy Park with Xena, which is just over the road from the palace. This photo is of Gavin after the race and he was feeling fine, and completed it in 1 hr 45 minutes. I have added an extra of the palace gardens looking beautiful with the spring flowers.

Thomas has been in Bucharest since Friday on his university college 'non-rugby' tour, and he phoned to say that Ryanair are cancelling flights and as they were all worried about getting home tomorrow due to cancelled flights they have decided to return a day early and get whatever flights they can to get home again. We managed to get him on a BA flight and so he is busy flying back to London at the moment. We feel relieved he was able to get back even if we paid a ridiculous amount for the one way flight back. It seems like all travel is now being affected. Luke was going to Germany next weekend for his birthday but now Germany have closed their borders. Many countries have introduced a 2 week isolation policy for visitors on arrival. We were going skiing in Switzerland over the Easter weekend but now the ski slopes have been closed due to the virus. The travel industry must be in melt down over this.

Amongst all this chaos and bad news there have also been some wonderful heart warming incidents, like the Italians singing across the street as they are isolated at home, the applause for the health workers, and the acts of neighbourly kindness. Interesting to also receive an email from Sainsburys supermarket today asking not to panic buy and reassuring us that they are trying to get stock replenished - all the supermarkets were sending out these emails. I also found out that despite being in lockdown and in isolation, dog owners in Italy are still allowed out to walk their dogs, which is good news.