As the early morning mist clears and the sun once agin reveals the full beauty of the Shotley peninsula, instinct is for many to jump in their cars and visit us.

Don't - as Health Secretary Matt Hancock insisted last night - that is not a request, it's an instruction.

If you, like me, are fortunate enough to live in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, then of course do your daily exercise, take your dog for their walks, enjoy the peninsula in all its glory.

But if you need to drive or get the bus here, then please obey the order to stay away, that is not just today, or tomorrow when it is expected to be the warmest day of the year so far, or even over the Easter weekend coming up. Wait until the lockdown is over completely.

You will be most welcome once we get through this, but for now it is too dangerous, for you, for me, for everybody.

This includes all area, from Alton Water, Holbrook Creek, Stutton, Freston, Brantham, Woolverstone, Pin Mill, Erwarton Ness, Shotley's woods and waterfront, the river banks on the Stour and Orwell, and the estuary is out of bounds to sailors and leisure fishermen too.

Of course this drastic action is not easy. Our businesses rely on visitors, tourists, walkers, sailors, cyclists and day trippers to top up the economy after a bleak winter and soggy spring, but nothing is open.

Please don't be fooled, as one person said to me the other day two metres away while in a queue, about the peninsula, and indeed Suffolk, escaping the worst. That is not true, we do have cases here, and there are probably many more people very close that are carrying the Cover-19 virus, and it spreads so easily.

I don't say this to scaremonger, it is fact. Ipswich Hospitals failure, due to a administrative error and clearly not done on purpose, to report 14 deaths may have given some people a false sense, and that has not helped some folks' perception.

So please obey the order - Stay away for now.

#stayhome #savelives #NHS