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There is a gate at the top of my favourite autumn loop where the track leaves the wood and the whole valley opens up below. On a clear October morning it is the best view I know within an hour of home. On a grey one, with the wind coming straight over the hedge, it is also the coldest place on the walk. For years I stood at that gate for about forty seconds, said “lovely,” and kept moving, because stopping meant getting cold.
What changed that was not a jacket. It was a hot drink.
Autumn walks want a reason to stop
Summer walks have plenty of reasons to stop. You sit on a bank, you lie in the grass, you watch the swallows. Autumn and winter walks have the opposite problem. The moment you stand still, the heat you built up climbing the hill starts leaving, and the sensible thing seems to be to keep going until you are back at the car.
I think that is a shame, because some of the best moments of a cold walk only happen when you stop: the light changing on the far side of the valley, a buzzard working the field edge, the sound of the stream once your own footsteps go quiet. A hot drink is a very simple way of giving yourself permission to stand there for ten minutes instead of forty seconds.
On a cold walk, the flask is not really about the drink. It is about the ten minutes it buys you.
What I want from a bottle on a cold-weather walk
I have carried most of the bad options at one time or another. Here is what I have ended up caring about, in roughly the order I learned it.
It has to keep the heat
That sounds obvious, but a lot of what I used to carry was a plain bottle that went lukewarm before I reached the first stile. An insulated bottle is the whole point. Tea that is still properly hot at the top of the hill is a different thing from tea that is merely not cold.
It cannot leak in the pack
I once poured half a flask of coffee into the bottom of my daypack on the drive to a walk, and spent the day with a map that smelled of it. Whatever I carry now has to survive being thrown in sideways and bounced along a rutted lane.
It has to work in gloves
Cold fingers and a fiddly lid are a bad combination at a windy gate. I want something I can open and close without taking my gloves off, and a cap I am not going to drop into the mud.
It should work in summer too
The same bottle that keeps tea hot in November keeps water cold in July, which matters on the long open stretches where there is no shade at all. One bottle for the whole year is one less thing to think about.
A bottle I have been looking at
Super Sparrow makes insulated stainless steel bottles built with this kind of outdoor use in mind. Their autumn line has a slogan I rather liked, “adventure never cools down,” which is about as close as a bottle company gets to describing my gate. If you are looking for something to carry on colder walks, the banner below goes straight to their range.
I would say the same thing about any bottle: look at the size against your pack, think about whether you want a wide mouth for ice or tea bags, and check how the lid works before you buy, because the lid is what you will be dealing with at a cold gate with numb fingers.
What goes in it
For what it is worth, my own habits are simple. Strong tea on a grey day. Coffee if I left the house in the dark. Hot water and a stock cube on the truly bleak days, which sounds odd and is the best thing I have ever drunk standing in a field in sleet. And plain cold water from June to August, filled from the tap the night before so it is properly cold.
Whatever you carry, remember that a hot drink warms your hands and your mood more than it warms the rest of you. It is not a substitute for proper layers, and on a genuinely cold day the right move is still to keep moving and save the long stop for somewhere sheltered.
Back to the gate
I stood at that gate last week for nearly a quarter of an hour. The dog sat at my feet and watched the field. The cloud lifted off the far ridge while I was drinking my tea, and for a few minutes the whole valley was lit up in that low autumn light that only lasts until about three o’clock. If I had kept moving, I would have been halfway down the hill and missed it.
If you would like something that keeps your drink hot until you reach your own gate, you can take a look at Super Sparrow’s insulated bottles. Then pick a walk with a view at the top, and stop when you get there.
Photos: Tima Miroshnichenko and Sergei Skrynnik via Pexels.