UKC

Has anyone else read this? Published last year and (as the name suggests) a hymn to unlocked shelters and their role in the mountains, it should be absolutely fascinating. It's got fulsome cover quotes for Adam Nicolson, Dan Richards, Sophie Haworth and others. And I'm really struggling to get in to it. 

I'm possibly not the target audience (from long summer evenings at Black Thomas' Hut on Raasay to Sourlies or midwinter climbing trips to Culra, I have already benefitted from their existence), and I'm no artist or historian (the author has some impressive if rather esoteric publications). I do have an academic background so I can appreciate the extensive work that has gone in to it - particularly the research and referencing, but I'm just failing to get me entranced and instead I find myself getting irked by the prose.

It's not that I don't care about the same things as the author - bothies, mountains, climate change, habitat loss, demographic shifts away from the outdoors in general but paradoxically towards areas not well suited to cope with an influx of frequently ill-equipped visitors. Perhaps I'm insufficiently enlightened - I view bothies as a fabulous and precious resource that allow me to visit different areas with a degree of comfort I might not get in a tent, rather than going to a bothy as being the point of going out - a bit like going to the pub, but on a grander scale and with more mud and worse toilets. Perhaps I'm not buying the 'oral traditions of songs as fragments of Gaelic oral culture' and their role in social constructs of shelter: worthy and should be recorded but not something that impacts on my life much - possibly reflecting my colonial heritage as an Englishman. Perhaps being stuck in Shenavall with an aggressive scot who drank a whole bottle of whisky while becoming increasingly erratic and disturbed has given me a different perspective that is perhaps less rosy?  

"A shelter may be a place to hide away, a retreat from the stresses of modern life, a retreat into time and space, an escape from personal trauma or war or covid, but at its most basic it's just somewhere to rest for the night. It struck me how a bothy is deeply intertwined with the need to sleep and to find a place to lay your head, with some protection from the dark, the weather and the wind." Well... yes? Are we surprised that mountain accommodation for the night is connected to needing a kip out of the rain? Why is my internal monologue delivering this in the voice of a particularly irritating Radio 4 presenter in a mid morning slot who has just discovered these things called bothies and wants the world to share in songs around the fire?

I'm keeping going as I don't wish to be defeated and hopefully I will get more used to her style. The footnotes and historical stuff are fascinating, but the author's back story for me takes away rather than adds to the content. At present though it is filling in some texture to my mental map of bothies and their place in the hills, at the expense of navigating the blindingly obvious as fundamental discoveries. Interested to hear if anyone else has had a better experience overall?
 

b 

In reply to ben b:

I wouldn't take these too seriously. It's a William Collins book, and as is the way with these things, three of the four authors with puffs for this book on Amazon (Cal Flyn, Adam Nicolson and Dan Richards) also publish with HarperCollins. Having said that, Wm Collins nature books tend to be top drawer.

In reply to ben b:

Nope, picked it up in the shop, and despite it being very well written and included a wealth of research it did nothing for me.

Struck me as being a second wave band-wagon book, with the author almost having a Victorian explorer mindset; ‘look what I’ve discovered’, conveniently ignoring the fact that locals had been there for years. 
 

But you could argue their intended audience, as per the Bothy Bible, isn’t your already acquainted regular hill-goer, rough stuff cyclist or wanderer.

In reply to ScraggyGoat:

That’s very true - and not dissimilar to the repackaging of having a swim or a run as wild swimming or extreme mountain running etc. Bothying as zen retreat and social anthropology fieldwork. 

Glad it’s not just me then  

b

In reply to ben b:

social anthropology fieldwork. You wrote that in jest, however there has been a Glasgow Uni Human Geography PhD published on Bothy Culture:

‘Huts, bothies and buildings out-of-doors: an exploration of the practice, heritage and culture of ‘out-dwellings’ in rural Scotland’.

In reply to ScraggyGoat:

For any one interested, the thesis is on line -

Abstract

This project provides an insight into the culture and practice of what has been termed ‘out-dwelling’, a cumulative term for huts and bothies. In doing so it draws attention to Scottish rural leisure and seeks to explore the materialities, experiences and practices of the ‘out-dwelling’ scene. As such, it focuses upon both the buildings and their users, speaking to the intimate geographies of this culture, as well as to its broader cultural significance. Part of this task involves an exploration of landscape, and of the means by which out-dwellings facilitate an engagement with physical surrounds beyond their built form. Just as this thesis seeks to situate the intimate interior of being in buildings, it also displays the ‘out-dwelling’ world through a broader lens, viewing these buildings and their users as part of a broader cultural movement, informed by the social history of land-use and ownership in rural Scotland. Inspired by an interest in hutting as a political act, this thesis also explores the critical edge to this potentially radical culture and situates ‘out-dwelling’ within a broader international hutting history. In doing so, this thesis enables a fuller understanding of the past, present and, to a certain extent, the future of such practice within rural Scotland.

https://theses.gla.ac.uk/8057/

In reply to ben b:

we were chatting about bothies in the pub last night and about always carrying a tent just in case the intended bothy was either full or occupied by person or people who we didnt want to share our evening with. some (maybe most ?) of the time of course jovial and entertaining evenings were/ are to  be had with strangers. but sometimes the occupants were/are very odd, weird, disturbed , disturbing. one wonders if the author has had many /any of those ? 

edit : and of course they probably didnt want to spend thier evening with us ?

In reply to mike123:

I suspect if someone hasn’t met a weirdo in a bothy then they haven’t spent enough nights in bothies… and that’s without the folk singing!

B

In reply to ben b:

Stop reading it! It sounds awful.

Problem solved.

In reply to ben b:

... "If I said you had a beautiful bothy, would you hold it against me?" ?

In reply to ben b:

Id suggest the perfect antidote would be reading  "mountain days and bothy nights" 

In reply to Eam1:

I’m in a minority, one that in some circles probably qualifies as a heretical sect, but I didn’t like MDaBN at all. Maybe I should revisit it but I didn’t like what I perceived as rather a self congratulatory tone and the inverted class snobbery.

Oddly I met the author in a bothy once and he was extremely good company.

In reply to ben b:

I've spent many nights in bothies without meeting a weirdo. Of course, it could be that I'm the weirdo.

https://www.streapadair.com/Scottish-mountain-landscape/Some-Scottish-bothi...

In reply to streapadair:

Some great photos in there, thanks

b

In reply to 65:

I enjoyed the MDaBN books, went to a talk by the author where he made a few low-key but irritating sexist comments which rubbed me up the wrong way.  Don’t think there were many women in the room, maybe only me.

I pulled him up about it (in the Q&A sessions).  Definitely an awkward moment……… 

In reply to Sealwife:

Good for you. Not easy but needs saying.

In reply to Sealwife:

A relative of mine had a similar experience with Cameron McNeish.

In reply to streapadair:

What a wonderful set of photographs - and memories. Thank you.

In reply to streapadair:

Wow . Great set of pictures . And hand on heart you ve never spent and evening with a weirdo ? Also . Wow . 

In reply to mike123:

Looking through the pictures, I was reminded of a few weirdos.  Also the one which was subject to guerrilla maintenance with a very interesting walk over high hills carrying roofing felt (over the watershed march to avoid being seen).  I miss being fit.

Of course as said elsewhere - I could be the weirdo.

In reply to Fat Bumbly 2.0: I suppose weirdo conveys a certain negativity when actually many of the characters were likeable nutcases with interesting tales to tell . Sometimes about mountains sometimes about thier interesting life’s . Often ex forces with stories that one would suspect were just a fraction of what they had seen . I suspect the tiky toky instawank outdoor influencers story banks will be somewhat lacking in comparison .

edit : and any stories they do have will only last 25 seconds 

In reply to mike123:

I met a bloke a couple of years ago who was camping below the castle at the end of Kerrera. He'd got a driftwood fire going on the pebble beach and offered me a brew. We got chatting and he had a long and interesting outdoor story. What really stuck in my mind was that he had an inoperable brain tumour and this was possibly his last proper foray. We talked about Scottish land access (and owners good and bad), places we'd been to and independence. It was quite thought provoking for me. What will I do when/if I know my ticket is up? Hopefully, I'd be able to visit somewhere special for a last time and face eternity with some degree of serenity. I suspect the Kerrera beach bloke has passed on now but it sounded like he was happy being where he was. It wasn't a bothy but a chance meeting with a like minded man. I rarely stayed in bothies, preferring to camp in the hills far away where the only weirdo I'd encounter was myself.

In reply to Lankyman:

That would indeed give you something to think about, and would leave a big impression.  

Re. the op, if you don't like something don't read it.  Doesn't mean it's good, doesn't mean it's bad (unless it is), but maybe that style doesn't work for you. That's life, there's plenty of stuff published even on here I don't like the style of , but I'm not obliged to read it

In reply to wbo2:

Fair comment. I don't like being beaten by books though - it's a trait I seem to have caught from my wife, although she takes it to excess (she has willingly and completely read Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, The Trial, and Anna Karenina in the last month - a level of masochism I can only start to comprehend). I think I'm just disappointed to be reasonably excited about a book and then discover it is inducing very high levels of antibodies in me.

I suspect if we ended up in a bothy somewhere we would have a good natter until I  say something along the lines of my usual unsubtle "I read a terrible book about bothies" gambit... which may be an error given her jiu jitsu prowess

b

In reply to ben b:

As someone who has been using bothies for over 50 years and very actively involved in bothy maintenance for almost 20, I too was interested in this. I found I disagreed with the author on just about everything, but found it an interesting book all the same. My generation of bothy users have our own ideas of bothies and bothy culture, so it's interesting to see how others see them. I think I'd enjoy a bothy night with her just for the craic and comparison of our attitudes.