A bizarre sight appeared in the Scottish Highlands this month. Dan Brown and his father were hiking the mountain Beinn Bhuidhe when they looked down at a pool of water below and were stunned to see “a perfect circle of ice slowly rotating in the water”.
This was an exceptionally rare phenomenon known as an ice circle, something more often seen in Scandinavia and other much colder regions, and which can appear on the surface of lakes, ponds and rivers. The circles can also reach extraordinary sizes, over 200m (655ft) across in some cases, and spin gracefully like a record on a slow turntable.
Such otherworldly sights may be reminiscent of crop circles, but whereas hoaxers have been largely responsible for making those, the ice
