And even if you don't want a full-on 4x4, the more equipped you and your car are to deal with the muddy roads, ice, snow and floods that winter inevitably brings, the better.
It is, perhaps, no surprise that I now spend so much of my time swimming beside ducks, alongside the crackling sound of ice, in muddy rivers and through opaque ponds; I grew up soaked utterly in Weil's Disease.
Anyone exposed to corporate training may find days calling radiators eggcups no stranger than being woken up at 4am to crawl round a muddy assault course, but ice-breakers and team games don't happen to freelancers.
All that has kept parts of the streets covered in a muddy mulch, with the occasional ice stalagmite poking through.
Chunks of ice and snow muddy the path; gnarled, bare tree branches leave a passageway only a foot or two wide.
But the Twin Lakes, we discovered, were starting to thaw, and the paths in the woods were muddy and slicked with loosening ice so it was hard for us to walk very far comfortably.
Shortly after leaping and dancing on the muddy track to meet Ruler on Ice, Breen had no real explanation for what had occurred.
Bath, more famous for muddy games of rugby than sports on ice and snow, came out in force to get a glimpse of Britain's first Winter Olympics individual gold medallist since the skater Robin Cousins in 1980.
"A wish?" I asked, taking my eyes off the muddy water and my beautiful loy krathong, which was iced with banana leaves, yellow carnations and purple orchids, then stuffed with three incense sticks and a yellow candle.
It involved singing clues to houseguests' imacted names, retrieving muddy CDs, and climbing ramps made of what looked like ice.
