Tunstall reservoir becomes a mirror before the setting of the sun

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/16/tunstall-reservoir-mirror-setting-sun

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The surface of Tunstall reservoir became a mirror during the hour before the setting of the sun behind Wolsingham Park Moor, reflecting dazzling light deep into the ancient oak wood that rises above its eastern bank. Our giant shadows, projected by the low-angle sunlight, stood as tall as trees as we slithered along a footpath that had become boot-sucking liquid mud in places where cascades, fed by days of rain, flowed down into the reservoir.

In spring, before the leaf canopy closes overhead and plunges the woodland floor into deep shade, the path will be fringed with early purple orchids, wood sorrel, sweet woodruff, violets and sanicle. Even now it was just possible to detect the earliest signs of new growth in the hearts of primrose plants – tiny, embryonic leaves surrounded by last year's tattered foliage.

But winter here belongs to the mosses, and this mild, wet weather suits them perfectly. We found trees felled by past gales now subsiding into the soil under carpets of cypress-leaved plait moss. Its silky, woven shoots of incurved leaves were tipped with golden-green new growth, advancing ahead of an army of spore capsule artillery held aloft on inch-high stalks, ready to shower microscopic spores on to splintered branches freshly torn down by last night's storm. We passed emerald cushions of hair moss whose needle-pointed leaves speared through fallen, decaying oak foliage that had shaded them last summer.

By the time we reached the edge of the wood the sunlight had been quenched by the fells and the path we had trodden was lost in shadow. We leaned against the wall and washed mud from our boots in puddles then headed for home, buoyed with anticipation. The lengthening of the days is still barely perceptible but the faintest hints of the start of the annual cycle that will soon unleash that riot of new growth that is spring were there to see.