WELCOME
AS I WRITE THIS, I feel the familiar fug of winter dissatisfaction descend in waves like the veils of ceaseless rain sweeping past my window. My tent is still drying after last weekend’s wet, wild and wholly unsuccessful night out. And the forecast isn’t changing any time soon. Frustrated, my eyes fall upon a dog-eared copy of Bothy Tales by John D Burns. A lightbulb moment: there’s another way!
It may seem contradictory to escape the confines of four walls for four more. But not all walls are made equal. Bothies are not built to keep a person inside. Instead, their function is to keep you safe and sheltered as you venture out further in search of freedom. They can enable solitude, create camaraderie. However you may find them – cold and dark, awaiting your company, or already crackling with fire and conversation – bothies signify belonging in wild and lonely places. Few people understand this better than Juls Stodel, who packed her worldly possessions into storage and embarked on a Big Bothy Walk to every single shelter cared for by the Mountain Bothies Association. Read her beautiful, thoughtfully written account of this journey on p32.
Shelters like these offer a gateway to the outdoors when the going gets tough, as James Forrest discovered when he watched Storm Babet rage from inside the beloved Warnscale Head Bothy (p24). Bothies are perhaps most necessitated in the Scottish Highlands. In the Cairngorms, as local writ
