In reply to UKH Articles:
An interesting dilemma, something I've thought about myself, from a "writing about it" perspective.
A couple of old friends and I started visiting bothies each winter, during our annual week in the winter mountains. At first, they were a means to getting into the more remote areas, now they are part of the experience itself, and sometimes no hill is involved.
When we first turned up at the door of Glen Pean on a bitterly cold February night, we had no previous experience of actually staying in a bothy. There were a couple of chaps "in residence" in the sealed end of the bothy with its stove so, being polite, we restricted ourselves to the utterly cold and grim other end with a fire so rubbish we actually had our feet inside the hearth, as the temperatures that night fell t minus 15 outside. Had we been regular users, I'm sure we'd just have joined the two chaps, we certainly weren't unwelcome.
I joined the MBA on our return. I remember receiving the pack of newsletter, booklet and most importantly, the photocopied list of bothies and their locations. These were only listed by region and grid reference. I pulled out all my maps and spent a happy few hours marking them on the OS sheets, and making notes on the list to make future planning much easier.
Over the years we've now visited a fair number of the NW and Central Highland bothies, and have grown to love them. We've learnt to carry more fuel than we thought we could carry. And more hipflasks. The whole thing has become part of the joy of being in outdoors, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There's also something about sitting in a remote building around a fire, whilst the mountains gather around the walls, and the wilderness almost seems to grow after nightfall. On a still clear night, to walk outside and stare at white mountains shining silver due only to starlight, is something that makes life worth living.
I do think, though, that all the above experiences were a valuable part of the learning experience. Our bothy knowledge was hard won, and added to with each trip. There were no easy gains, I spent a long time planning trips and working out the best way to approach each bothy. I think this has contributed to my love of these wild highland shelters.
So, does the fact that much of this planning is handed to you on a plate lessen the experience? I'm not sure. Perhaps it reduces the feeling of "belonging to an elite group" of mad folk who stay in stone huts in the middle of nowhere, and perhaps that's part of what's disturbing us "bothy folk" when we see them in the press, on the BBC and in the Sunday Times.
Increasingly, I write myself. This has mostly been about canoeing, online and in mags, but I now have my own blog (non-commercial, in my profile if interested). And on the paddling side, even my small efforts have noticeably increased the (small) number of people paddling some of "my" routes - I know this as they've told me.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about Uags, and the joy of staying there when the rest of the country was being battered by the Beast from the East. I did ponder whether popularising the bothy was the right thing to do, but hopefully I got the right balance of making it clear what it meant to visit such places, and I talked about the bothy code, that it will educate people to respect these places. And I think this is what the Bothy Bible is trying to do, and I think Geoff Allan has tried hard to get that balance right. Inevitably, though, it is advertising their presence, and it is commercial. Since the MBA themselves added locations to their on website a few years back, it is hard to criticise the Bothy Bible for taking it a step further, and the demand from customers was no doubt already there. It also raises money for the MBA directly, and possibly increases their membership too.
I still, though, wonder whether I should be writing about some wild places or not, but I love doing it, and I genuinely enjoy finding out about others have been inspired to do the same having seen my stuff.
I don't know if we should call this the "Wainwright" effect. That gentleman has often been "blamed" for the fact that the Lakeland Fells are now teeming with people. I'm not sure this is right, I certainly don't believe the numbers would have stayed low if his guides hadn't been published. I think he just got the formula right. The folk buying his books were already heading for the Lake District, though its fair to say he may have focussed their attention on particular favourite hills of his. If he hadn't done it, somebody else would have done. Perhaps its similar with the Bothy Bible?
There are a number of other major factors too. Certain bothies are now regularly used as part of the Cape Wrath Trail for instance, and during the peak season, this must be having more of an effect than the Bothy Bible. I bet Essan is even busier this year because of the family who got stuck there last year and rescued by the "Harry Potter Express".
My suspicion is that the remote, out of the way, bothies will be fine. The folk who seek them out are mainly the type of people who would understand and respect them. Those bothies that are easy to get to, though, are more at risk of over use and abuse. I guess there is an argument that the management of these bothies will need to be addressed, even if its simply with some sort of basic toilet facility as you would find behind a Scandinavian wooden hut, though who would pay? Not something I particularly want to see, the bothy shovel is part of the experience, but when you see places like the woods immediately next to A' Chuil, something might have to be done.
I am, though, completely against the use of bothies by commercial organisations for overnight stays. I guess we need to work out where the commercial line lies, but I can't honestly see how writing about them for a book is much different to what happened in the old days when, for example, Richard Gilbert's Walks books mentioned them as part of the description, its simply that in the modern world such information appears more rapidly and is so easy to get hold of. People paying to be taken to a bothy as a specific part of their trip, though, is definitely on the wrong side of the line.
Blimey, I went on a bit!
From guided walks to guidebooks, some fear that the unique free-for-all ethos of bothying risks being undermined by money and publicity. Where will it end, asks John Burns
