They may take an hour to get cold, and may be you can cope with another hour of pain but when you go longer it can really start to impinge on the ride. If you're doing 3 hours or 4 with painful, frozen feet it can become the main limit on your performance.
With a 4+ hour cold ride set for last weekend I decided to do something about this.
If all the socks and overshoes aren't enough, what next? Ah ha, heat is what I need. Yes, some actual warmth inside the shoe. A quick internet trawl brought up various electric foot warmers from £20 to £70 and upwards, and a range of reviews about them.
And then I came across "Hothands Foot Warmers" - £4 for a 5 pack from Tesco. These are slim pads that you stick to the underside of your sock. Unwrapping them from their packet activates the pad and it starts generating gentle heat.
On Sunday the temperature started at 0deg and rose to 2deg by mid-day. My feet were toasty the whole way around! So just one less thing to deal with when your out on a big one, and with probably just 4 or 5 big rides planned for these deep winter months it looks like a single pack will do me. Sorted.