Nothing here but a bothy

IN the same way as the astronomer watches for the North Star, the ‘bothyer’ watches for a chimney. The grey stone stack stretching up over the rise of the glen is the guiding sight that the long walking day is coming to an end. There, through snow-flicked conifers, across valleys of ice and far-away mountains, beyond the charcoal line of a freezing stream, lies Scotland’s most perfect secret: the lone bothy.

‘There is great respect for the anonymity of bothies, a relationship between land, man and discovery’

Indeed, Britain’s northernmost country is the homeplace of the bothy. These small wooden huts or stone cottages, once farm buildings used for labourers, are now remote refuges for any hardy traveller, to be entered free of charge. Of the 100 bothies across the UK, 83 can be