OUR annual fishing holiday is still on. We had wondered whether the estate we visit would welcome visitors from south of the border and were careful to ensure that our route did not go through any foot and mouth hotspots.

If anything, farms in Scotland appear more vigilant than farms in England. Nearly every farm gate has disinfectant buckets and mats ready, with warnings about restrictions on visitors. Friends have remarked that the same vigilance is exerted on the continent and Ireland when they have been away on holidays.

Get off the plane or boat abroad, and foreign visitors are told to dump any food they have brought from England and ensure they have imported no meat and dairy products, and then walk over a disinfected mat. Come back to England - nothing! Not even a notice. It looks like the Government does not care and thinks it is no longer worth taking any precautions.

The estate we visit has herds of wild deer roaming the glens, but occasionally sheep do stray in from over the hills and the roads are littered with wandering lambs and ewes. If foot and mouth ever got a grip up here I do not know how it could be controlled.

So here we are. Enjoying a run of hot, dry weather that has the fishermen and women in the party absolutely gutted. Not a drop of rain has fallen to swell the rivers and encourage a run of salmon or sea trout. We have spent most of the week fishing the hill lochs for small brownies, ravenous little fish that will take any fly, cigarette end or sweetie paper that is dangled at the end of a line.

Tomorrow, John and I are due to walk up to a hill loch, eight miles inland, where we shall stay a couple of days in a small bothy, with a couple of like-minded friends, a Sparsholt College ghillie, gin, steaks, bacon and cans of Diamond White for John. Rocket fuel he calls it - that is before he falls over. So far this week, no fish at all have been caught on the loch, although there has been one fanciful, unwitnessed tale of the sea trout that got away by stripping all the line off the ghillie's reel in a straight run to the other end of the loch.

There is one sure thing about the hot weather. It will end as soon as we go home and want a few more weeks for hay-making, swathing the rape and harvesting the barley. Before we left the farm, John and his brother had cut all the roadside verges near us and baled them for hay. At one time, the council could be relied on to cut the verges, but no contractors have visited our area for several years.

This has meant that some of the corners and junctions are so grown-over with grass and weeds that a clear view of oncoming traffic is nigh impossible. In one way it encourages a more circumspect approach to these junctions, as cars have to edge out to see if the road is clear, but for every ten vehicles that are apprehensive on a crossing, there is always one that takes a risk.

Mind you, at the latest parish council meeting I attended, the last point raised was about the decrease in visibility on a corner near to our farm, due to an overgrown hedge. Guess who had to carry the news home to the farmer in question?

Updated: 11:53 Thursday, July 12, 2001