A Fire in Our Bellies

It’s been a year since I joined Protect Our Winters UK, and as I write this, it feels like the world is on fire. I once asked an MP what it takes to be one. She said, ‘You need to remember what sets a fire in your belly to act, and hold onto it through thick and thin.’ I never forgot that, and I’ve never felt it more acutely than over the past year.

Today we’re releasing our Impact Report for 2025.

There is so much to say about the impact our partners and community had last year, but still, the report already feels wildly out of date. So what to say? In a world where there is still hope for mitigating the impacts of climate change and building resilience for the world we now live in, the main thing to remember is to be brave enough to do something. Individual actions matter, but the biggest, bravest action we can take is pushing for policies and decisions which create a fair transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and holding key decision makers to account.

If you are reading this, I ask you to pause for a moment. Think about this question: Where do you feel most alive and most energised? What do you picture? Does the outdoors feature in the top three scenarios that come to mind? Do you remember when you first fell in love with the outdoors?

Chances are you found it through some sort of physical activity or sport. Most of us, if we’re lucky, will find ourselves in the outdoors during our youth. Perhaps our first memory is wobbly lines on green grass during the annual school sports day. Remember the sports days we missed during COVID-19? We are seeing it happen again this year, but this time, sports days are being cancelled or forced indoors by extreme weather.

When we talk about protecting our winters, we’re talking about protecting the outdoors. In protecting the outdoors, we are protecting our wellbeing, our places of inspiration, and the places upon which our livelihoods depend. We’re protecting the thrill of the outdoors.

Looking back on 2025, one of our standout moments was launching our Clean Miles campaign. To ensure our campaign reflected the real experiences of the outdoor community, we gathered insights from more than 900 people across the UK via a detailed survey on their experience of using public transport to get outdoors. This shaped our Clean Miles campaign, which tackles one of the biggest barriers to climate action: transport.

Transport accounts for around two-thirds of the outdoor community's emissions. While many people want to travel more sustainably, our research found that unreliable services, high ticket prices, and poor provision for carrying bikes and outdoor equipment make public transport an impractical choice for many journeys. In response, we launched the Clean Miles campaign in October 2025, calling for public transport that is more reliable, affordable, and accessible for everyone travelling to the outdoors. The campaign has been signed by more than 1,850 individuals and 49 organisations, demonstrating strong cross-sector backing for change.

Building on this momentum in 2026, we translated the evidence and recommendations from our community into the report Clean Miles: Low Carbon Transport to the Outdoors. This provides government and key decision-makers with a practical roadmap to make low-carbon travel the easiest choice for outdoor access.

Many have suggested that transport is simply too complex an issue to fix. At a time when services across the UK are facing nationalisation and overhaul, we reject that narrative. We see a vital window of opportunity to ensure the needs of the outdoor community are heard as key decisions about train travel within the UK are decided.

No single organisation can tackle the climate crisis alone. That's why collaboration across the outdoor sector remains key to our movement. In 2025, we worked alongside 25 partners across the outdoor sector to help turn climate ambition into meaningful action. Our partnerships demonstrate the tangible impact that strong climate leadership can deliver:

Industry Support: We supported the Outdoor Industries Association to equip outdoor professionals with practical sustainability guidance, delivered climate leadership training for Snowsport Industries of Great Britain, and helped Snowsport England develop and launch its sustainability strategy.

Corporate Action: Inghams launched its five-year Nature and Climate Action Plan, with our Head of Advocacy, Dom Winter, joining its Grounded Voices Advisory Board. As a result of this strategic approach, Inghams and Santa's Lapland have reduced their emissions intensity by 19% and 16% respectively since 2022.

Carbon Literacy: Through our partnership with Crystal, 159 colleagues completed our accredited Carbon Literacy Training. This led to an estimated 51 tonnes of CO₂e savings through the actions they committed to take. In total, we delivered nine Carbon Literacy courses during the year, equipping participants with the understanding and motivation to reduce emissions. Together, the actions pledged through these courses are expected to save 50.9 tonnes of CO₂e, bringing the total number of people trained by POW UK to nearly 1,000 since 2020.

Athlete Advocacy: We continued to amplify the voices of athletes as trusted advocates for climate action, bringing together inspiring speakers at Kendal Mountain Festival to show how a shared love of adventure can inspire collective action.

While our latest report reflects our achievements in 2025, the months since have only reinforced why this work cannot slow down. Our movement is growing at exactly the moment it is needed most.

Across 2026, climate change has continued to reshape the world of sport. Extreme heat disrupted play at Roland Garros, the FIFA World Cup has been marked by growing concerns over player safety in soaring temperatures, and scientists continue to warn that rising temperatures threaten the long-term future of winter sports. Fewer and fewer locations are expected to be climatically suitable to host the Winter Olympics in the decades ahead. As I write this, Cairngorm, the very heart of winter sports in Scotland, is being ravaged by wildfire in a situation described by those in the community as apocalyptic.

Against this backdrop, we're committed to action. We've developed new long-term partnerships with organisations including Storm Care, Common Coffee, and Café Notos. We have created innovative collaborations with brands such as Picture, Petzl, and Mozillion that connect outdoor products with meaningful climate action, and partnered with Byway to make lower-carbon adventures easier to discover. This year we'll be working with BASI to embed sustainability into instructor training, helping equip the next generation of snowsports professionals with the knowledge and confidence to lead change.

Our movement has continued to grow through the power of trusted athlete voices. In the past few weeks, we are proud to have welcomed World Champion skeleton athlete Matt Weston to the POW UK Athlete Alliance. He described our work as practical and solutions-based. We offer a real route to climate action at a time when action is most needed. Alongside Matt, our entire Athlete Alliance has inspired more people to move from concern to action in 2026.

But athletes cannot carry this responsibility alone. As more athletes choose to raise their voices, the organisations that govern, fund, and shape sport must do the same. National governing bodies, event organisers, brands, and international federations all have a responsibility to lead the transition towards a more sustainable future for sport. Protecting the places we participate in sport, compete, and find joy requires courageous leadership, ambitious policies, and collective commitment across the whole sporting ecosystem. If we fail to act together, many of the sports and outdoor experiences that have shaped our lives risk becoming memories rather than opportunities for future generations.

I’ll end on this reflection. Right now, a quote from @perthshiremags is trending:

The outdoors should be experienced beyond a screen. We deserve the feeling of strong winds on a summit, the satisfaction of completing a challenging descent, the incredible wildlife you discover on your adventures, and the moments that remind us why these places matter. Yet increasingly, our screens are filled with footage of wildfires, floods, and disappearing snow.

Right now, climate action is about having the courage to take collective action to change the systems that continue to support fossil fuels and prioritise short-term profit over the protection of the ecosystems on which we all depend.

So the final question to consider is this: where do you stand? As the places we love are under threat, what is your response? Will you choose to stand on the sidelines, or stand alongside a movement determined to protect the outdoors?

The future of our mountains, rivers, coastlines and winters is not being decided by those who care, it’s being decided by those who act.