Winter Widdop Water

I often wonder about the secret life of the high reservoirs at Widdop and Walshaw Dean during the dark, and especially in the long nights of winter.  Sometimes moonlight, sometimes starlight but mostly deep, deep black. And no matter how many times I read it, nothing better expresses the strange cold life of Widdop than Ted Hughes poem of the same name:

Where there was nothing

Somebody put a frightened lake.

Where there was nothing

Stony Shoulders

Broadened to support it.

A wind from between the stars

Swam down to sniff at the trembling.

Trees, holding hands, eyes closed,

Acted at world.

Some heath-grass crept close, in fear.

Nothing else

Except when a gull blows through

A rip in the fabric

Out of nothingness into nothingness