New Year in a bothy

Anyone ever heard what a bothy is? Well, it's not much. It's four stone walls, some wood on the floor and some plastic on the roof (with a spade as your toilet-tool) in the highlands of Scotland, and you only go to it if you're prepared to go back to basics. And that's exactly what we wanted - for New Year's Eve!


the Kinbreak bothy

So of we went, with four friends (Jamie, James, Harriet and Andy) who all had more experience in this kind of adventure than we had. It takes a while to drive there, but you're rewarded with a spectacular piece of scenery on your way (especially in the Glen Coe area). We decided to hike to the bothy the same evening that we arrived, possibly based on some false calculations of one of us - we ended up moderately lost and exhausted, all carrying a minimum of 20 kilos on our backs (carrying coals, whiskey/port bottles, and lots and lots of food!), hiking uphill without a sign of a path. Oh, actually, with many signs of path but never actually finding one (how often did we hear each other say "oh, i think i've found it!", "guys this is definitely a path here!"). Fact is, it's hard to find you way in the dark, it was really only due to James's compass skills we didn't get completely lost. He just alerted us that we were following a strange direction - and were those two lights there other hikers coming towards us (are they moving at all?), or two lights at the border of the lake, where we just came from? Mmmm. And so we decided to camp right there on the spot (thank god we had our tents with us!).


the improvised campsite

In the morning i couldn't wait for it to get light to see where we were. Excited (you could clearly see the path we were looking for all that time) but a bit disappointed too - we weren't nearly as high up as we had hoped! Fortunately the rest of the hike to the bothy was negligible, and we were all glad we had done a bit of the climb the previous night already. Once at the bothy we weren't too keen on more hiking for that day, especially since it gets dark at four pm. So we started drinking whiskey and cooking extravagantly - sure we're in a bothy, but that doesn't mean we should have a great new year's eve dinner! The couple we shared the bothy with that night could swear that it was the first time that a squash was being cut in a bothy. Ever.


inside the bothy

New year's day we got up too late and with a bit too much headache to be arsed to climb up a Munro, so Harriet, Jon and I went up a little hill behind the bothy (the hard way - oops!).


view from the hill


boggy lake at the top

On the 2nd of January we got up an hour before sunrise to make full use of those few hours of light to go up another Munro - to our surprise in clear skies! It was a fantastic piece of luck to be rewarded with such an overwhelming view of the highlands. That day we also saw some Ptarmigans (type of grouse that only lives at high altitudes, brown body in the summer turning white in the winter) and many deer. I was all excited, which was very typical for a beginner in the Scottish highlands, according to James. There are complete stalking seasons to keep the number of deer down - they apparently are the ones to blame for the (current) lack of trees there. Only on the odd cliff a sapling has managed to grow to an awkward looking birch tree.


mesmerised on the Munro


Ptarmigans

Not encountered any other person except from that new years eve in the bothy. So remote and beautiful!

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Here's a nice poem we found in the bothy (not very applicable to the weather we had, fortunately!):