The Glovebox Defence: What We Pack for Days That Go Grey

On the August bank holiday we drove forty minutes to the coast, ate our sandwiches in the car with the wipers going, and then drove home again. That was the day out. Roughly ninety minutes door to door, plus two hours of motorway.

We are not usually quitters. But there is something about grey sky over an empty seaside car park that persuades even the stubborn that the sensible thing is to turn round. The trouble started when we got home. We spent the rest of the afternoon faintly cross with ourselves — not because of the weather, which nobody controls, but because we had let a bit of drizzle make the decision for us.

Grey is not a forecast for cancelled

That's the whole argument, really. Somewhere along the line we'd started treating a cloudy morning as a verdict rather than a bit of information. The BBC app said rain. We heard the word 'sorry'.

So we made a small, unglamorous change: we stopped asking whether it was going to be nice and started asking what would work in the weather we were actually going to get. The second question is much easier to answer, and it has the useful side effect of not needing to be right.

The glovebox kit

The other half of the change was physical. There's now a small canvas bag in the boot, permanently packed, and it has probably paid for itself about nine times over in saved afternoons. This is what's in it.

• A proper pack of cards. Ours came from a charity shop for a pound. Dog-eared, slightly sticky, infinitely better than another hour of screens. This is the single most-used item in the bag.
• A flask, filled before we leave the house rather than at a service station for the price of a small joint of beef. Two enamel mugs go with it.
• Two spare pairs of socks each, in a freezer bag. It is astonishing how often this is the fix. Wet socks end a walk; dry socks salvaged from a bag save it.
• A microfibre cloth and a small towel. One for the windscreen and the dog, one for us.
• A folded bin liner per person. Wet coats, muddy boots, the seat you'd rather not ruin.
• Five pounds in coins in a little tin. Parking, a chip shop, a car park barrier that only takes change.
• A torch, cheap and cheerful, plus one of those pocket rain ponchos that costs less than a coffee.

Nothing in there is clever. It is all stuff we already owned. The point is that it's assembled and it stays assembled, so that the decision to go doesn't have to include the decision to pack.

The twenty-minute rule

Here's the bit that does the actual work.

When we arrive somewhere and it is raining, we give it twenty minutes before we make a judgement. Not twenty minutes to see if it clears — twenty minutes to see how it feels when it isn't clear. Nine times in ten, the rain is nowhere near as bad as the car park made it look, the coats do their job, and we're glad we came.

The tenth time, we go home. But we go home having decided, rather than having fled. That's the difference between a washout and a wasted day, and it turns out it matters.

Where to go when it's tipping down

A bit of research and an hour in the right building can turn a drowned afternoon into a decent one. Our favourites, all tested, none of them costing much:

Free museums. The big ones in the cities are the obvious answer, but the small ones are the joy. Local history, a single gallery, a room of old tools and a very keen volunteer on the door. Rain gives you an excuse you wouldn't otherwise have to spend an hour in there.

The library. Warm, free, open all day, and nobody minds if you come in with wet shoes. We've read whole books in county libraries while waiting out a front. Some have a cafe, which is a bonus.

The cathedral or minster. Almost always free entry, almost always dry, and somehow very good for the mood on a wet Tuesday. You don't have to be religious to sit for twenty minutes and let yourself be quiet.

A covered market. Not a shopping centre, a proper covered market, ideally one with a pie stall and a fruit and veg man shouting. Leeds, Bristol, Carlisle, Bury, Oxford — they exist everywhere and most towns have one within forty minutes.

The garden centre. Yes, really. It costs the price of two hot drinks and took us years to get over ourselves. There is a reason so many people are in there on a Sunday in January, and it isn't the compost.

The woods or the canal towpath. Woodland in rain is one of the great free shows — quiet, dripping, smelling brilliant. A canal path is flat and firm and the pubs along it were built for damp walkers. A beach in the rain is fine too, provided the car is close and the socks are dry.

Stop dressing for a different day

One last thing, and it's the one we keep relearning. Most of the discomfort of a wet afternoon comes from wearing the wrong coat, not from the weather itself. A proper hooded waterproof, trousers that aren't jeans if there's real weather about, and footwear that can take it will change the whole experience. Cheap, wellies on offer at the garden centre in autumn, a woolly hat that covers the ears.

And a flask. Always a flask. Rain is much easier to tolerate when there's a hot cup of tea at the end of it, taken standing up, while the sky does its worst.

What the cards have been for

The pack of cards got used on a wet afternoon in a Peak District car park while we waited for a three o'clock shower to pass. It passed at half four. We played gin rummy, ate a squashed flapjack, watched the cloud lift off the tops, and then had the hill perfectly to ourselves.

Best afternoon of that month.