Bleak, Austere, Welcome to 2011

There is something very cleansing about stumbling into a cold bleak January after the outrageous indulgences of Christmas and New Year celebrations. A long random and biting walk along a cold empty and windy beach is the very tonic to help you think about the year ahead and what you could, possibly, achieve.

So instead of the removal of things, as in the traditional New Years resolution; stopping smoking, cutting out sugar, being nicer, more thoughtful and then a few weeks down the line failing miserably; lighting a fag whilst shouting insults at the boy next door, it is perhaps more pertinent to add things.

To enrich yourself with a new talent, a new skill, to indeed try and be nicer and more humble - shouldn't we be trying to do that anyway?, but to also learn to knit a scarf, sing a new song, design a cool tee-shirt, learn a new yoga pose, make the perfect oat cracker. Indeed this is what I shall set to this year.

Dungeness, apparently one the largest expanses of shingle in the world, is a unique and mysterious location in Southern England's Kent. Home to not one but two power stations and a thriving community of artists, fishermen and twitchers.

A cluster of Nordic looking wooden huts sit looking down onto the ice-cold grey English Channel, the isolation and desolate beauty of the place makes it an inviting destination for anyone wanting to escape the perversities of 21st century capitalism.

Or even to take a long walk on a cold new years day...and watch the sun dip into the sea.