January

Posted bynickletjogPosted inDiary

Sunday 1 February 2026

A fine winter’s day, Monday 5 January, over the icy Grand Union Canal in Berkhamsted

I suspect that the Weather Gods may have taken umbrage with me, when on New Year’s Day I declared ‘Dry January’! Since that time, and other than three days of crisp winter sunshine at the start of the month, there has barely passed a day without grey skies and plentiful rain – around three times the monthly average, if the BBC Weather stats are to be believed! Anyway, rather belatedly, I am finally sitting down to pen a Happy New Year message to you all, and to forward a few photos of some winter walks that I have undertaken solo, with Rachel, and with our walking group here in the Chiltern Hills.

We usually have a dozen or more keen walkers (with Nordic poles) joining a group trek each Saturday morning – as here, amongst the World War I trenches of Berkhamsted Common on 10 January

Heading into 2026 I am continuing to present a monthly walk on the Saturday ‘Mix Brunch’ Show on MIX92.6 radio – the programme broadcasts live from St Albans, and I was invited last summer to become their ‘Resident Rambler’ and to come up with a local(ish) monthly stroll for the station’s website, before unveiling my choice in discussion with the host presenter. Aside from being a lot of fun, this new (for me) activity has involved trawling the villages and countryside around St Albans for walking routes, and discovering previously unknown (to me) corners of Hertfordshire. Some of these pictures are from these ‘radio walks’.

Rachel on the Watling Chase Trail near Colney Heath, on our recce of Tuesday 30 December . . .
. . . where we explored the Albans Lakes . . .
. . . spotting a heron in flight . . .
. . . and the alpacas of Willows Activity Farm
Another group walk – and some sunshine – as we climbed up to Gaddesden Place on Saturday 24 January
The planning for my next ‘Resident Rambler’ walk, on Friday 30 January, took me, between the showers, across a rather boggy Bricket Wood Common . . .
. . . then past horses grazing on the Munden Estate . . .
. . . and some handy ‘mounting steps’ . . .
. . . before finishing along a stretch of the Ver-Colne Valley Walk as far as the confluence of the two rivers, near Bricket Wood

My ongoing Thames Path walks with Rachel have been on ice for a while, not so much due to the winter weather as to a busy start to the year, but we will be returning to the riverside to continue our London-bound ramble before too long. We are also planning, in the summer and with friends, to walk the 68-mile Camino Inglés, an ancient route from Reading via Winchester to Southampton Docks, where pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela once disembarked for the dangerous sea crossing to the port of A Coruña on the northern coast of Spain. Before that, in April, along with my friend Mark, I will be trekking The Dales Way, across West Yorkshire to Bowness-on-Windermere in Cumbria – to complete the walk that we started last summer. I will of course be posting Blogs of all of my excursions on these pages.

Mist in the valleys – back at the icy start of the month

As for today’s Blog title, ‘January’ is a song by Scottish rock band Pilot, that was recorded in 1974 and released at the start of the following year, as the follow-up to the group’s debut single ‘Magic’. The song’s composer, also the group’s lead vocalist and bassist, David Paton, has claimed that the lyrics are not so much about the month, but rather around a fictitious female character in a novel that his wife then happened to be reading: no matter – his work reached No 1 on the UK charts, and indeed in Australia.

My first gig evening of 2026: the totally unique Stone Jets, performing at Frithden’s aRTy Barn on Friday 16 January . . .
. . . and a ‘team hug’ with the incomparable Martyn Joseph at The Stables in Milton Keynes, after his lively and heartfelt set two nights ago – from which friends Mike, Heather, Helen and myself emerged ‘bouncing and thinking’

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