Where will you go when this is over – when the open road finally opens again? I’m thinking of heading north. South, or certainly south-east, is to where things have been migrating for decades. It’s why a flat now costs a million quid and the average vehicle speed in London has barely changed for a century.

Perhaps enforcing those who are able to work from home will do more than HS2 – conceived mostly for people just like them – ever will for the viability of living somewhere else.

One of my favourite cartoons from this time shows a man wearing pyjamas, sitting at his computer, saying: “So those meetings could have all been emails!”

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And south is to where the biggest airports are. I’d believe the argument that flying is the most exciting thing humankind has ever achieved, and that doing it from the UK to Faro with exceptional reliability for 50 quid is one of our most impressive industrial feats. But while great things happen when brilliant people can travel to share and learn and make the world a more peaceful, open, knowledgable and prosperous place, perhaps it would be better if there wasn’t quite so much of it. The sky certainly looks better with fewer marks in it. I’ve never noticed that before.

So, once I’ve hugged the old folks again, north on wheels it is. One of my friends said the other day that, if you’re feeling claustrophobic, you should open an online map and go places on screen and in your mind. Nice idea.

My journey is still in my head, and it’s interspersed by motorways – because lovely though back roads can be, they can also add hours to a journey, and I don’t see that particular fact changing, no matter how much the rest of the world does.

My first dream stop is in the Peak District, around the Hope Valley and the River Derwent. This is my easy-to-reach getaway from home in the South Midlands.

2 Scotland landscape