welsh hills again

Has it really been a year since the first lockdown struck and we all retreated to our homes?  I went back and read my first blog about coronavirus  and see that I wrote it on 28th March 2020, so yes, a year ago almost exactly.  How long ago it seems.  This long slow year has chugged away and here we are now, with the vaccination roll out offering hope and the emergence of new variants reminding us that maybe, in some ways, coronavirus is here to stay and the world must adapt to it with annual vaccinations perhaps, as for flu.  We shall see.  I hear people talking about getting back to normal and I wonder what that will look like.  Somehow I find it hard to believe that it will be exactly as life was before the pandemic hit. A walk through the churchyard But there are lots of things to lift the spirits, chiefly from today that here in Wales we are allowed to travel anywhere in the country.  By "country" I do mean Wales as the rest of the UK is still off limits for the moment. 

 So here we are in the middle of March and on Friday the Welsh Government announced some small changes to the rules in Wales.  The vaccination programme is going well with more than 23 million people now having received their first dose of the vaccine across the UK and nearly 1.5 million having had both doses.  Across the UK we have also been in  lockdown which itself has an impact in reducing the spread of the virus.  Deaths have fallen sharply as have new cases and hospitalisations.  The death figures for today in the UK are 175 and there are 6,609 new cases.  There has been some pressure mainly from business and some politicians for coronavirus lockdown rules to be eased and in England the Westminster government has published a "road map"  giving various dates when changes will be made, assuming that cases continue to fall or at least to remain low.  Schools have gone back in England this last week and in Wales many more years of school will reopen next week so there is a