Cold, bright January walks

January gives you two kinds of day. The grey, sodden sort where the best plan is a fire and a book, and the cold, bright sort where the sky goes a hard clean blue and the frost holds all morning. When the second kind comes, drop whatever you had planned and get out into it. They do not last, and they are the best walking days of the year, better than anything summer offers if you ask me.

The walk I do on a bright January morning starts at the bridge in the village and follows the Coln upstream, the same flat riverside path that works in every season. In January it has a particular quality. The meadows are stiff with frost, the puddles in the lane are frozen white, and the low sun comes at you almost horizontally, throwing long blue shadows across the grass. About a mile and a half out, then turn and come back, and you are gone an hour. There is no need to make it longer. The cold does half the work of making it memorable.

The light is the thing in January. The sun never gets high, so all day it stays at the low golden angle you only otherwise get at dawn and dusk in summer. It rakes across the frosted fields, picks out every blade and twig, and turns the whole valley into something worth stopping for every few hundred yards. On the right morning, with the frost down and the sky clear, the stretch of river below Arlington Row is as good as I see it all year.

The frost is the gift

The cold firms everything up, which is the real reason to go out on these mornings. The mud that plagues the path from October to March goes hard overnight in a proper frost, so a January morning after a cold clear night is often the cleanest walking you will get until spring. The ruts that would have you slithering in November set solid, and you can walk the meadow without ruining your boots or your temper.

Get out before the sun softens it, mind. The window is real but it is short. Once the frost goes, usually by late morning if the sun is on it, the ground turns to the usual winter porridge and the magic goes with it. So a bright January walk is an early one by necessity, not just by preference. Set an alarm, have your coffee, and be on the bridge by nine while it is all still hard and white.

Dressing for it, honestly

Be honest with yourself about the cold. A bright January day looks gentle through the window and is not. The wind off the open valley has an edge to it, and standing still by the river to watch the light is colder than you expect. Layers, a proper hat, gloves you can actually walk in. I take a flask every time, because a hot drink halfway round changes the whole walk and turns a cold slog into something you actually look forward to.

Boots, not because of mud on a frosty day but because the going is uneven and the frozen ruts turn your ankle if you are not paying attention. And something for your face if it is really biting, a scarf you can pull up, because the cold finds the gaps. None of this is dramatic kit. It is just the difference between a walk you enjoy and one you cut short, cross with yourself, halfway round.

Keep an eye on the time of the light, too. The days are short in January and the sun gives up early, so a late-morning start can run you closer to the dark than you would think on a midwinter afternoon. There is no danger in it on a flat riverside loop you could walk blindfold, but it is nicer to be home and warm with the afternoon still bright than to be finishing in the gloom.

The right shape for the day

Keep it short and keep it bright. There is no glory in pushing on once the cold has got into you, and the whole point of a January walk is to come back to somewhere warm with your blood moving and your appetite up. An hour out in the frost, then lunch by a fire, is the right shape for the day. Anything longer and you are just being stubborn about it.

What you are really doing on these mornings is collecting one good clear day out of a run of grey ones. January does not hand them out often. For every hard bright morning there are three of low cloud and drizzle, and on those I would not blame you for staying in. But the clear ones come, two or three a week in a good spell, and they are worth rearranging the day around.

If you are staying with us in January, watch the forecast and seize the clear morning when it comes. The grey days will sort themselves out, and a fire and a book is no hardship on one of those. The bright ones are the reason to be here in winter at all, and they go quickly, so the rule is simple: when the sky is blue and the frost is down, you walk, and everything else can wait until the mist comes back in the afternoon.