‘I watch the sun rise from a hammock in the garden’ – 15 ways to start your day well now the clocks have gone back

Get out with the dogs for the sunrise. Photograph: Baxter Bradford/robertharding/Getty Images/Collection Mix: Subjects RF

Shorter days, colder weather, earlier sunsets: winter is on its way in the northern hemisphere – and the clocks going back has only driven the point home. Here, Guardian readers reveal the small rituals that bring joy to the gloom of waking up in the morning.

I don’t lie in bed and fight the clock. I make a hot milky coffee and take my hammock out to the garden, which is secluded and quiet. I hitch it up and climb into the hammock to watch the stars in the sky as they are slowly extinguished by the dawn. Cindy-Lee Noble, 67, retired gardener, Dorset