It’s cold, grey, wet and windy. HOORAY!
In All Weathers
Matt Gaw Elliott & Thompson £16.99
There’s nothing like a scorching hot British summer to make you appreciate the cold, grey, damp weather that we usually dismiss as miserable or depressing.
It was during the recordbreaking hot summer of 2022, when rivers ran dry and gardens and the countryside wilted and grew brown in the heat, that writer and naturalist Matt Gaw resolved to stop complaining about bad weather. Instead, he decided, he would actively seek out rain, sleet, wind, fog and snow in order to ‘revel in the sheer variety of weather that washes over this archipelago’.
Eager to experience a proper downpour, he travels to the hamlet of Seathwaite in Cumbria, the wettest inhabited place in the country, where the annual rainfall is more than double the UK average. The Lake District has its own vocabulary for the kind of rain you get here: it’s either ‘yukken it down’, ‘hoyin’ it down’ or ‘hossing it down’. Gaw rejoices in the word ‘stotting’, used in Cumbria and Scotland to describe rain so hard that it bounces off a surface.
Just as he had wanted, he finds himself walking in rain that is so heavy the sandwich in his pocket goes soggy and water gushes around his boots. Once you open your mind to it, (and invest in the right waterproof clothing), he insists that walking in the rain is an enjoyable experience, because ‘rain can nourish the soul’.
Seeking out fog is trickier than finding rain because of its unpredictability, and it takes Gaw a month to find a good thick fog, even with some help from the Met Office, who ‘look shifty’ and talk about the many variables when it comes to fog. Fog, essentially very low-lying cloud, can be ominous and disorientating, but to experience fog lifting is a thing of beauty. ‘Watching its retreat, the transition from smoke to burning brightness, really has the power to enthral.’
On Skye, in the Scottish Highlands, Gaw and his children experience a white Christmas for the first time. On Boxing Day they go and swim in a natural outdoor pool that is ‘dentist-mouthwash blue’ and so cold that ‘it feels scalding. Nerves scream in confusion saying, whatever it is, you shouldn’t be in it.’ When he emerges, his feet are so numb he can hardly get his socks on, but he is euphoric.
Research has shown that people are more likely to feel listless, dispirited and unhappy in cold weather, but Gaw suggests this is because of our tendency to hunker down indoors when it’s cold. Perhaps, he says, we’d find winter less depressing, and our mood would lift, if we were more willing to brave the cold. If you are appropriately dressed and ready for it, ‘there is something very invigorating about cold temperatures.’
On Skye, Gaw runs into a wind that is one of the most violent he’s ever experienced, so strong that a waterfall ‘is going in the wrong direction.’ Standing near a clifftop, he and his family find this a magical experience. ‘We are suspended in the air. An impossible weight at an impossible angle, held by nothing.’
They are not alone in feeling exhilarated. ‘Physiologically, there is evidence the wind changes us,’ he writes. ‘Metabolism speeds up. The blood vessels of the heart dilate, increasing blood flow and the availability of oxygen. Pupils widen. The body prepares for fight or flight.’
In All Weathers pulls off the trick of shining a fresh light on our much-maligned climate, and Gaw’s contention that we should force ourselves to go outside in all types of weather is a persuasive one. Immerse yourself in the natural cycle of the weather, he vows, and you will discover that ‘there can be beauty and wonder and fun in every flake, drop and gust’.