Sophie Bennett
What a Bothy Actually Is
A bothy is a shelter, not a hotel. Four walls, a roof, usually a fireplace or a stove recess, and a bare floor or a wooden sleeping platform. That is the entire offer. There is no warden, no booking system, no running water, no toilet, no bin, no electricity and no mattress. Most are unlocked and free to use, looked after by volunteers who give up weekends so the rest of us have somewhere dry to sleep in a remote glen.
Understanding this before you set off changes how you pack. You are not checking in; you are borrowing a space and accepting responsibility for it. Anything you need, you carry in. Anything you produce, you carry out. Treat a bothy as a bothy-shaped hole in the weather rather than a hostel, and you will sleep better, leave less mess and be genuinely welcome back.
Planning the Walk In
Distance on the map rarely matches time on the ground in the Highlands. A six-kilometre approach across peat hags and heather can take three hours with a full pack, and river crossings that look trivial in summer can be impassable after a night of rain. Give yourself daylight you do not strictly need.
Check the mountain weather forecasts for wind speed as well as rain. A bothy in a glen can be reached in almost anything, but the walk in is the bit that catches people out. Tell someone your route, your intended bothy and your expected return, and remember that mobile signal often vanishes a few miles from the road. In an emergency, dial 999 and ask for the police, then mountain rescue.
Deer stalking matters too. From around early July through to mid-February, estates manage deer on the hill, and some ask walkers to keep to certain paths or avoid particular corries. Look for signs at car parks and gates, and if in doubt, take a slightly longer route. It costs you nothing and keeps access relationships healthy for everyone.
What to Carry
Assume nothing is provided. A workable bothy kit looks like this:
- Fuel and stove — do not rely on a fire being possible, or on there being wood. Take a stove and enough gas or paraffin for every meal plus hot drinks. A small candle lantern or tealights add light but need constant watching.
- Water treatment — burn water is usually fine but can carry contamination from upstream grazing. Filter or boil everything you drink.
- A trowel, toilet paper and bags — for human waste you bury properly, and for everything else you carry out.
- Sleeping bag and mat — even in summer, stone floors and glen floors are cold.
- Head torch, spare batteries, earplugs — bothies are shared, and people arrive late and snore.
- Midge headnet — from June to August this is not optional.
- Rubbish bags — one for your waste, one spare for anything you find.
Leave the axe and the saw at home. Fires damage bothy floors and chimneys, and dead wood in a glen is habitat, not fuel.
Leave No Trace in Practice
The principles are simple: plan ahead, travel on durable ground, take only photographs, leave only footprints. In a bothy, that translates into specific habits.
Go to the toilet at least thirty metres from water, burns and the bothy itself. Dig a hole about fifteen to twenty centimetres deep, well into the soil rather than the surface vegetation, do your business, bury it thoroughly and carry the paper out in a bag. Do not leave it under a stone; it will be there in two years. If the ground is too rocky or frozen to dig, everything goes in the bag.
Keep the bothy cleaner than you found it. Sweep the floor with whatever brush is there, stack any leftover fuel neatly for the next person, and take away every scrap of your own rubbish, including tea bags, orange peel and bottle tops. Food waste attracts mice and pine martens, and rodents chewing sleeping bags at 3am is its own kind of lesson.
If a fire is genuinely safe and there is a proper fireplace, use only what you have brought or cut from a bag of logs left for the purpose. Never dismantle a wall, fence or peat bank for fuel, and never burn plastic. When you leave, make sure the fire is dead cold.
Wildlife and Photography Around the Bothy
This is where bothy trips repay you. Sit still outside at dusk and red deer will often move down to graze within a few hundred metres. Ptarmigan and snow bunting appear on high ground, golden eagles patrol ridges on clear, breezy days, and otters work the coastline and larger lochs at first and last light.
Photography follows the same rules as walking. Keep your distance, use a long lens rather than your feet, and never chase an animal for a better frame. Avoid disturbing anything during hard weather, and keep dogs under close control or leave them at home — ground-nesting birds and sheep are easily disturbed.
The best light comes in the hour after sunrise and before sunset, so plan the day around it. Protect your kit: a waterproof cover, a microfibre cloth and silica gel sachets in your bag. Condensation and horizontal rain will find every weakness in a camera body, so dry everything thoroughly when you get home.
Leaving It Better Than You Found It
Before you close the door, do a slow lap of the room. Check under the sleeping platform, behind the stove and on the windowsill. Take out anything that is not part of the building, even if you did not bring it in. Fasten the door and shutters behind you, and write nothing on the walls.
Bothy culture survives on this small, repeated contract: arrive lightly, use little, leave nothing. Do that, and the next walker gets the same quiet, windproof room you did — which is, after all, the whole point.
