The article is somewhat alarmist, behavior modification can greatly limit the risk of ticks. This might be something that is more alarming in the UK for some reason if they haven't had to worry about it so far?

I live in Massachusetts, pretty close to ground central for Lyme's disease.

I've been mountain biking, hiking, doing outdoor photography, etc.. most of my life and have never managed to get bit by a tick and contract it. I've found 5 ticks or so in that time have always found them before they could bite me just because I was aware of the risk. And that's talking hundreds of days per year of outdoor activities.

Tall grass is high risk. Taking your sweet time golfing is risky. Riding your mountain bike through grass at 20mph is much less risky. You'd tend to be riding on a trail too, even if it's not more than 6" wide, it still somewhat reduces the surface for the ticks to cling to. Having a job like being a surveyor is very high risk since they're out in the grass working and not moving quickly.

Once you get under major tree cover (we have lots of it) the undergrowth tends to thin out and you'll contact less grass/leaves and have less exposure to ticks grabbing onto you. This is perhaps one of the reasons you hear a lot about people getting Ticks down on Cape Code if they're exploring tall grass environments, there is less dense tree cover on the Cape compared to the mainland.

By far the riskiest thing anecdotally seems to be owning a dog. Dogs love to go walk through the high grass, ticks love to grab onto their fur. Then they bring the ticks into your car, into your house, sit on your lap. When you walk your dog you tend to go where the dog wants to go within reason. And you're walking, so you're moving at speeds ticks are happy with. So you're perhaps walking areas you wouldn't walk alone if you're wary of ticks. It seems like practically every dog owner I know regularly deals with ticks brought in by dogs, and a lot of the dog owners have actually gotten Lyme's disease, some more than once! You'll hear stories of 10 ticks on a dog coming back from a walk.

If I guess I've found 5 on me in 25 years of outdoor activities 1 was biking in/around tall grass on Cape Cod (found it on my leg), 1 was walking in North Carolina (found it on my sock), 1 was brought into the house by a dog (the only deer tick of the 5). Not sure of the others, maybe 5 is generous.

The article also doesn't mention how certain activities can be done in different months to limit risk. Particularly deer tick are much harder to spot if you are out in risky areas in the early spring. They're super small at that point. But later in the summer they're grown and easy to spot.

For me that super high risk deer tick season where they are immature coincides with mud season. We are already discouraged from hiking & biking through the mud, so the double whammy of peak tick season + mud season makes it easy to select outdoor activities that are lower risk at that time of year.

It's just really hard to take the article seriously, this just is not going to be a risk for people who live in big cities and spend little time in natural environments, particularly if they also don't have pets. That covers a lot of the population.