Country diary: Miniature 'oil' slicks in lofty locations | Cal Flyn

Killin, Perthshire: It was on the slopes of a Munro that I spotted a warning sign of this bone-dry spring - a tiny bacterial bloom with a petrol sheenWhen you move across the country, as we did a few months ago, you are changing not only a house but the landscape that comes with it. Suddenly, far-distant lochs and mountains known only from maps swing into view; unknown summits shimmer invitingly in the heat haze of this unlikely sweltering spring.Recently, restless to explore, we scampered up the slopes of Meall nan Tarmachan, a Munro that rises high above Lochan na Lairige - high and hemmed in by the grand curving buttresses of the Lawers Dam - and looked out across the many rippling ridgelines,  bare hill upon hill upon hill. Continue reading...