Couple drive through night to avoid police
TWO people from east London have been caught driving through Wales in the middle of the night despite apparently trying to steer clear of police carrying out lockdown checks by avoiding main roads.
Officers from DyfedPowys Police stopped a black Audi as it was travelling near St Clears in Carmarthenshire during the early hours of Monday morning.
The vehicle had been driven all the way from Ilford - a distance of around 240 miles.
Furthermore, the car’s occupants - a man and a woman - admitted that they were heading for St Brides Bay, a village on the Pembrokeshire coast which is a round trip of around 580 miles from their home address.
They were reported for breaching lockdown regulations and told to return home.
The driver was also reported for driving without insurance, meaning the passenger - who was insured - had to drive the car back east.
A spokesman for the Pembrokeshire Roads Policing Unit of DyfedPowys Police said that, when asked, the couple admitted they had avoided motorways once they got into Wales, instead using their sat nav system to guide them through the country on smaller roads.
Dyfed-Powys Police is still conducting stop checks throughout the counties of Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Powys, having issued fines to hundreds of people since the lockdown regulations came into force in March.
Despite lockdown being eased to some extent in Wales as of Monday, the regulations still make it clear that people should not travel excessively and that they should “stay local”.
In England, there is no limit on the distance people can travel, but the Welsh Government’s differing rules come into play as soon as someone crosses the border into Wales.