Embracing the beauty of winter in my new home town

At the start of each year I like to come up with a few intentions – not resolutions, as I always think that’s just setting myself up to fail, but things to keep in mind over the months ahead. For 2026, I have four. The first is to progress our cottage renovation slowly but steadily, and I’ll have an update on that soon. Another is to give my blog design a bit of an overhaul, and if you’re a long-term reader you might have spotted that I’ve already managed to tick that one off.

My other two intentions are to carve out time for personal creativity – to experiment and have fun, without client pressure or deadlines – and to embrace the seasonal joys in and around the beautiful West Country town of Bradford on Avon that we’re now lucky enough to call home. With those in mind, I’ve got into a routine of waking early and heading out with my camera to capture whatever catches my eye, and today I want to share some of the resulting photos, taken on two of the wonderfully cold, misty mornings that we’ve been treated to in recent weeks.

The first set of images was snapped on Tory – one of the terraces of centuries-old houses that line the steep hillside above Bradford on Avon. It’s only a few minutes’ walk from our front door and it’s one of my favourite places to wander. Normally you can see the entire town spread out beneath you, but on this particular morning it was hidden by a sea of fog, with only a few clumps of trees and the church spire rising above it like islands. It was ethereally, dreamily beautiful, and I lingered for quite a while on the bench outside the tiny chapel of St Mary Tory, watching the rose-gold winter sun slowly burning through the mist.

The second set of images was taken in the countryside and lanes around my house, on one of those frozen, fog-shrouded days when everything feels silent and still. The soft, diffused light made the world around me glow, with the sculptural silhouettes of bare-branched trees emerging from the mist. There was also a dusting of frost, and I was struck by its ability to add beauty to everything: spiders’ webs, fallen leaves, a cluster of dried hydrangeas peeking over my neighbour’s garden wall, even a forgotten tangle of brambles in the corner of a field.

I’ll share more from my little corner of south-west England over the coming months, but in the meantime I’d love to know if you’ve been soaking up the delights of winter. It’s a season that many people see as something to endure, but it’s one I want to embrace. And as tempting as it may be to stay snuggled up in bed on a bitterly cold, frost-covered morning, I promise that the magic waiting outside is worth getting up for!

All photography by Abi Dare