The Secret By The Lake

Travel Guide

Blackwater (luckily fictional but heavily based on Blagdon in Somerset according to the author), Blackdown Lake and the Mendip hills are evoked in ways you will never have seen them before. As characters in their own right.With eyes and ears of their own and with stories as twisty and turning as the winding roads up the hills.

The Cottage at Blackwater

Advice before going to Blackwater is to wrap up warm, be sure to look over your shoulder at all times and to not stay anywhere near Reservoir Cottage –  for the walls have ears and the mirrors have eyes and you will never be quite alone….

“A few days passed. Still Reservoir cottage did not feel like a home”

The Reservoir cottage is one that is old and dilapidated and is in a village where people watch each other, twitching their curtains or staring at the lake. It is old, with doors that creak and seemingly open when once they were closed. Fires that crackle and burn out. Dark wooden walls with faded pictures and a family falling apart inside it. Stairs that creak and groan from under years of hidden secrets and an empty bedroom of a dead sister where no one dares go. The contrast with life in Paris is stark and from having friends to living in a tight knit community where no one speaks is hard to bear for Amy and the family.

The Lake

“The more I came to know it, the more I was drawn to it and the more I realised how complex it was, something organic and living sometimes capricious or shy.”

The dark waters of the lake shimmer at night and reflects the dark underside of the community. Secrets of the past and those including Caroline, Julia’s sister who died when only 17, are bubbling to the surface.  The lake is evoked with atmospheric and evocative scenes of swirling mist and dark water and eerie sounds carrying themselves over in the wind.

The cottage and the lake are characters in themselves. Each word moans and groans  to highlight and paint a full picture – from the damp beds, to the open creaky doors, to the fading wallpaper and the chills…..this is a setting that will chill and thrill in equal measure.