UKC

Looking to find somewhere I can stay which is cheap (hopefully no more than £20 a night) that I could have to myself in the Highlands. Looking for something a little less basic than a bothy, hopefully with a cooker and some form of heating. Don’t mind having to walk to it. 

If you are a member of mountaineering Scotland you get access to the mountain huts and bothies association. From what I remember the access to the huts is free and all you have to do is see what dates are free, request the accommodation and then return the key once you have left. You only need to pay for your annual membership to MS. There are huts in Onich, Glen Brittle and Glen Feshie. Whether you are on your own on not depends when you book your stay. See the links below for more information.

https://www.mountaineering.scot/home

https://www.mountaineering.scot/clubs/huts/national-huts

If you’re talking about weekends in my experience these huts are booked up by clubs and solo travellers don’t stand a chance.

Midweek might work for the OP.

Summer/ winter, midweek,

/weekend, short stay/ long stay ?

If you were looking to use a climbing club hut all these would factor what would be available . As above, get Mountaineering Scotland membership and you then have reciprocal rights to book other Club huts, all for a very reasonable nightly rate.

Go midweek and there is a very good chance of solitude even in popular areas.

If you want a walk in, try JMCS huts at Coruisk or Steall Meadow. SMC Ling Hut in Torridon has a 10min approach. The CIC on the Ben is, sadly, mostly empty in the summer months.

But the best remote shelters are  still the Bothies !

It isn't free, but it is cheap.  You also get access to those huts as an individual BMC member (or a member of an affiliated club).  It's a reciprocal deal with the Glen Feshie hut I think, the other two are joint MS/BMC huts anyway.

There are a fair few bunkhouses/hostels where you'll get a bunk for <£20, and the huts are cheaper, but I don't think you'll find anywhere you can book a room to yourself for that let alone the whole place.

I've used a few of these hostels whilst passing through on my tod, and on the whole they're delightful.
https://www.hostel-scotland.co.uk/find-a-hostel 

As are the Gatliff Trust hostels in the Hebrides (cheaper, more basic, but not bookable in advance): http://www.gatliff.org.uk/  Are you (not you Wanderer100, I mean the OP) interested in the Islands as well, or just the mainland?

There are certainly places you'd be in with a pretty good chance of having to yourself at certain times, and the online booking form may give you an idea of your chances.  I had the JMCS Coruisk hut to myself for a few days in June a couple of years back - I got lucky with the weather and it was a pretty magical few days.  I'm happy enough in my own company, but even so as it turned out the most enjoyable evening was the one spent sharing the last of my whisky and a small driftwood camp fire with a couple of German backpackers who'd pitched up around the corner.

Thanks all. Had a look at huts, I’ve stayed in quite a few of them. No chance of the major ones like Glen Brittle being empty. Thought about coruisk but it says you need a minimum of two people. Might try one of the remoter smaller ones. It’s for a week in Feb so hoping that places might let me have sole use on the cheap on the basis that outside of the winter climbing honeypots they are probably empty. Doesn’t actually have to be in Scotland, any nice place would do, islands are a bit far. Basically it’s for a solitary meditation retreat and the very few options available particularly for this purpose are booked up. Obviously really wouldn’t work if there were others present. Any other suggestions?

I don't know how well that hut would suit your purposes, or what your chances would be of having the place to yourself - but unless things have changed it's actually a minimum of two .  ie: two people for one night, or one person for two nights.

You might want to double check that with JMCS, but as I said above I stayed there a few nights on my tod a couple of years back and that was certainly the case then. 

It was the summer, and the hut isn't as well used as it really should be so I suppose it's possible they were bending the rules a bit in the expectation that I wouldn't be using much fuel.  (Heating/cooking is powered by bottled LPG, and the cylinders have to be taken in & out on the Misty Isles boat.)

Too late to edit -  I wrote "a minimum of two (people x nights)" above, but put it in < these > brackets so I guess that's why it disappeared.