Open to the Elements

A bothy can be hard to find, even if you know where to look. They’re free and open to all comers but you’ll seldom see a sign pointing the way to these mountain shelters found throughout Scotland and in parts of England and Wales (though rarely on well-used trails or popular climbs like their purpose-built counterparts in North America and other parts of Europe). Some, standing alone in fields of heather, are visible from a great distance. Others hide in the folds of the land or blend in so perfectly they’re almost invisible.

Most were built more than a century ago of stone pried from thin soil, only to fall into ruin before being reborn decades later as hiking refuges. The bothy at Garbh Choire in central Scotland’s Cairngorm Mountains resembles nothing so much as a stack of rocks amid a spray of boulders, and the hut at Warnscale Head in England’s Lake District is built entirely of slate atop an old slate