The Cailleach is the Celtic personification of ice, winter, and the cold. She rules the dark half of the year. These days, certainly in the Central Belt of Scotland, she has barely visited us for a number of years. I, for one, miss the old hag.

 

This project tracks her impact on a 13 foot deep reservoir near to my house and I've watched the ice get thinner each year on or around the 19th January, in each of the years 2023, 2024 and 2025. These were the coldest days of the year near my house for each of these years.  Back in the 1940s when my Dad was an adventurous wee boy, he remembered the population of his town going skating on the slightly shallower 9 foot deep local pond, on thick, thick ice - just 14 miles from where these images were taken 80 years later.  This is hardly a scientific experiment but the change is marked in both the long term and even in the shorter term.

 

I was going to photograph the reservoir this year in 2026, but the ice came to very little at all and there was very little to photograph - and so endeth this project.