February 04, 2025

Wintering in Britain – get cosy or go Gothic


 
Source: Visit Britain

Anglophile Peter Needham beckons you to explore Britain in winter and reveals some little-known advantages of travel in the chilly season.
 
Most Britons view with suspicion the notion of exploring their own country in winter. They prefer to holiday abroad and leave winter explorations of Britain to unorthodox foreigners and local eccentrics. Winter touring can, in fact, be pleasant and rewarding: you face little competition when sightseeing; queues disappear; road traffic dwindles, accommodation is easy to obtain (and often cheaper), and villages are wondrously free of tourist coaches. 
 
True, the weather can be cold – but less so than you might think. The climate in south-western coastal England is positively mild, seldom dropping below freezing. At Plymouth, Devon, the coldest temperature ever recorded was minus 8.8°C on 2 January 1979. That was regarded as a freak cold snap – yet a resident of New York, Chicago or New Zealand’s South Island would consider it relatively balmy. 
 

Other parts of England can be nippier, as survivors of the “chilly evening” of 10 January 1982, when the thermometer dropped to minus 26.1°C at Newport, Shropshire, will attest. That’s the coldest ever recorded in England; it’s unlikely to be repeated this side of the next Ice Age. 
 
For every winter day when snow or sleet fall in England’s south-western coastal regions (less than 10 days most years), there are crisp fine days when the sun lifts high over sparkling frosty landscapes, the sky glows a pale watery blue, the sound of the hunting horn echoes across the paddocks and a bracing walk becomes a delight. The only covering needed is a warm jersey and a jacket – plus trousers or skirt and stout boots.
 
If you want to avoid Britain’s winter extremes, stick to southern England and Wales. The Lake District further north can be chilly in winter but is still moody and magnificent. Lake District attractions become vastly more accessible when Japanese tour groups depart at the end of autumn. In warmer months, Japanese visitors saturate the district because of its association with the romantic poet Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter (creator of Peter Rabbit) and Robert Southey (author of Goldilocks and the Three Bears). All three are venerated in Japan.
 
The secret to enjoying winters in England is to get cosy or go Gothic. Getting cosy is easy – just find a pleasant pub, take a seat by the window and sip the tipple of your choice. Going Gothic requires more effort. It doesn’t necessarily entail dressing as a Goth or Vandal (ancient or modern). The relevant dictionary definition of Gothic is: “relating to a literary style characterised by gloom, the grotesque, and the supernatural, popular especially in the 18th century.” England abounds in that sort of thing – and Gothic attractions are positively enhanced by dark, dismal or downright creepy weather. Why not enjoy it!
 

Here’s an example. One English winter several years ago I found myself driving in a dim light on a lonely road across the Romney Marshes. In the words of the poet Edgar Allen Poe, “the skies they were ashen and sober; the leaves they were crisped and sere”. My mission was to visit reputedly haunted sites and to take in a few pubs at the end of the day. The drive skirted the Cinque Ports coastline of Kent and Sussex, past circular Martello towers (part of a defence system built against Napoleon) and headed to Lympne Castle, country residence of the Archdeacons of Canterbury for 800 years. The castle is said to be haunted by three notable ghosts: a Roman soldier; a sad-eyed priest and (most alarming of all) an apparition with an eagle’s body and a human skull for a head. Brooding in the morning mist, with snow glistening on its battlements, the castle looked highly conducive to producing ghosts. (How different from summer, when the forecourt is thronged with coaches and tourists eating ice-cream.) Even so, the ghosts were stubborn that day and refused to materialise. 
 
Later the same day, emerging from The White Hart pub in the ancient Cinque Port city of Hythe, I determined to visit St Leonard’s Church, known for the mysterious collection of ancient skulls in its crypt. In Hythe’s town square, an 18th-century stone inscription declares: “All persons are requested to unite their endeavours to keep this place clean and to prevent BOYS or others from dirtying the same.” Another sign says: “To the Church and Crypt.” The church was deserted when I visited but warm from a service earlier in the day. The 13th-century crypt was locked. Julia Woods, daughter of the church’s incumbent preacher Canon Woods, was happy to unlock the creaking crypt doors and guide me past 4000 skulls and thighbones stacked in the shadows beyond. Nobody knows who the bones belong to. Roman soldiers, invading Danes and Plague victims have been suggested.
 
“We open the crypt during the summer for tourists,” Ms Woods explained cheerily. “In winter, we let people in if we feel in a good mood. The skulls were re-stacked here in 1908 to stop them rotting.” 
 
I departed with snow falling lightly and crows wheeling overhead.  Had it been illuminated by the glare of summer light, the crypt visit would have been infinitely less memorable. 
 
Winter in London (Visit Britain)

Ideally, winter explorations of whatever type should be fuelled by a hearty breakfast. In London, Simpson’s in the Strand began serving breakfasts just five years ago, having opened over a century before. The establishment offers a breakfast called ‘The 10 Deadly Sins’, consisting of sausage, fried egg, streaky and back bacon, black pudding, lamb’s kidneys, fried bread, bubble and squeak, baked beans and lamb’s liver with mushrooms and tomato. If that sounds a touch too hearty, another menu option scrambles the eggs and omits the offal. 
 
In a healthier light, perhaps breakfast on kippers, toast and tea in a room resembling a Moorish palace at Rhinefield House, a 19th-century country mansion in the New Forest south of London. Built in Tudor-Gothic style by an eccentric army officer, Rhinefield House is now run as a hotel. Breakfasters sit among onyx pillars, Islamic inscriptions, elaborate mosaics and decorations wrought by Moorish coppersmiths. Instead of the morning newspaper, you can read the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam inscribed on a copper and bronze lantern.
 
The New Forest is a lovely place at any season and can be quietly enchanting in winter. A diverse 375-square-kilometre cross-section of southern English countryside, it has not changed greatly since William the Conqueror proclaimed it in 1079. It includes moors, bogs and much open grassland as well as woods and glades. Resident stocky ponies, with their shaggy manes and unkempt tails, are reputedly descended from hardy ancestors which swam to the Hampshire coast from the wreck of the Spanish Armada.
 
New Forest pubs include The Trusty Servant near Deadman Hill (once the site of a gallows) and the Alice Lisle at nearby Rockford. The Alice Lisle is named after a 17th-century noblewoman who appealed to King James II for clemency after being condemned by the infamous Judge Jeffreys to be burned at the stake for harbouring fugitives. The king graciously interceded, commuting Alice’s sentence to beheading. Naturally, her ghost is said to haunt the area, riding about in a wagon with headless horses and no driver. (The apparition is best viewed shortly after closing time.) 

A Gothic day is best followed by a cosy evening. Pubs fit the bill perfectly. They range from the Frog and Forget-me-not in London’s Clapham to the Marlbororough Arms in Chester on the English/Welsh border. You have to study that second name carefully to spot the spelling error. It was meant to be called the Marlborough Arms, but the signwriter accepted part of his payment in beer and drank it on the job.

Sipping a pint or four of Moreland’s Old Speckled Hen, Theakston’s Old Peculier or Donnington’s Old Thumper while seated in a brown-hued English alehouse staring into the brumal twilight can become an experience of mystical significance. You begin to appreciate the wisdom of the Paulaner monks of 16th-century Bavaria, who gave up solid food during the four weeks preceding Christmas and subsisted solely on specially brewed, strong beer. English breweries turn out an admirable variety of seasonally brewed, traditional winter beers, known as ‘warmers’ and designed to keep chills at bay. They include Young’s Winter Warmer, Fullers’ Old Winter Ale and Harvey’s Christmas Ale. Some of these are strong enough to knock your socks off. Harvey’s Christmas Ale, for instance, is 8.1 per cent alcohol. A merry Christmas indeed!
 
London’s winter cosiness is legendary. The tubes are always warm; so are many of the galleries and museums. Galleries are far less congested in winter and it’s easier to sample London’s famed theatre and performing arts scene. The great Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square, an annual gift from Norway, has been set in place. Its lights will be switched on from 2 December to 6 January, with carol singing each evening from 11 to 14 December. The Geffrye Museum’s period rooms (Kingsland Road, E2, admission free) have been decorated to depict 400 years of Christmas tradition. London highlights in the run-up to Christmas include the Spitalfields Winter Festival (a series of candlelit musical events at Christ Church Spitalfields (13-22 December), a festival of seasonal music at St John’s Smith Square (17-23 December), a Christmas flower show at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Halls (14-15 December) and Two Thousand Christmases, a program of poetry, prose and song at the Jermyn Street Theatre (very picturesque setting; 13-18 December). The 19th Great Christmas Pudding Race, a relay of Christmas-pudding runners around Covent Garden Piazza, will take place on December 4. In London, the cosy and the Gothic unite as nowhere else.

 

Peter Needham is a Sydney-based travel writer who has visited Britain in autumn or winter for years. 
 
 

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