DISCOVER January
Our tour of the year on foot begins with January – to some a gloomy time, but to a walker, like every month, one of glories too.
THERE’S ARUNNING joke in the CW office that I never go walking in January. Dormouse. Hibernation. See you in spring. You get the idea. There is a grain of truth in it: it has taken me the longest time to love this month.
At first, driven outside by New Year’s resolutions, I most relished the moments after a January walk. Hot fire. Hot tea. Hot bath. They never felt better than as defrost therapy following an icy expedition.
But then I started to like the walk itself. It was of course easiest on bright, white January days, plump with fresh snow or sugared with a hoar frost, when the grass glitters like you’re kicking through diamonds. Even a barbed wire fence can look exquisite when it’s decked with tiny crystals.
The air too, can be crystal: rushing like menthol into your lungs, clear enough you can see forever. Iremember one January day on Shropshire’s Long Mynd, cold enough to make my mittened hands ache and my face muscles feel like plasticine, but from the top I could see all the way to ice-white Snowdon, 101 kilometres away in north Wales.
Another January day and Iwas on Snowdon. I don’t have the crampon skills to climb to its summit in snow, so instead stuck to its lower slopes. Looking up to its top dazzling against a blue, blue sky; looking down on cwms full of clouds; listening to the clack of ice shards on Glaslyn: these are some of the best memories I’ve made on this mountain.
Then there’s the light. The sun rides low all day, stretching the golden hour and raking long, fantastical shadows from every object. And with days so short you can walk from the moment the sun peeps over the horizon to the one where it vanishes, squeezing the most from every last moment. On a practical note, ice-studs have proven invaluable for (mostly) staying upright on low-level walks. I also have a mini-sledge in case Icome across just the right slope…
Let’s be honest, though. January can often be soggy and brown, and squelching through mud in the rain can be something of a Pollyanna test. You can be glad of its life-giving force, the percussion of drops on waterproof hood, the fun of splashing through puddles, but I find tuning into the detail the most uplifting thing,
