Water Gate

A gate, with no gateposts, no fence or wall to block, no track or road within a mile. Slightly odd. Maybe it floated here in the last floods – but it looks brand new and would more likely be left half submerged. It’s a conundrum to think about on a solitary walk.

But this is Hallin fell, surrounded on three sides by Ullswater, and its fourth side does not join up at the same level as the high ground inland. It is the closest thing to a mountain-island the Lake District has to offer and Islands have a strange affinity with the unusual and the unexplained. Perhaps cut off from mainland, they are cut off from mainstream realities. A ‘nearly’ island like this one though would only have little mysteries. In the late winter’s afternoon with the sigh of wind in the bare branches and the waves just lapping onto the mossy stone feet of the fell, the gate coming from no-where and going to no-where must have a story attached that's surely slightly larger than ordinary life.