I wake to a lingering dampness. The air feels cold – and thick, as if it’s heaving with the historic breath of every hiker who has ever spent the night here. There are bodies in sleeping bags scattered around; they look like multicoloured logs. I roll onto my side, and pick up my phone to check my Oura sleep score. No service.
I wouldn’t say it was a comfortable night’s rest. It’s 5am and I slept in a bothy, an ancient farmland refuge deep in the heart of Wales. My back feels stiff, as it should considering I’m lying on a wooden bench without a mattress. The space is sparse; the sound of sleep bounces off the old stone walls. I’m suddenly restless. I give in to the urge to unzip; I need some air. Grabbing my walking boots and my bag, I stagger outside. The sky is tinted ombre; the earth is cool. I’m by myself, wearing cotton pyjamas and a cable-knit sweater, in the Cambrian mountains. A distant birdsong trills. For a second, I feel like the only person on the planet.
Nothing worth having comes easy: the phrase rings especially true when it comes to overnighting in a bothy. The day before, I’d hiked 15 miles with a heavy backpack full of supplies to bed down for the night in what is effectively a stone-walled tent; today, I’ll repeat the process as part of a point-to-point bothy-hop through the Cambrians. As a trip, at times it will be enjoyable, at others, arduous. “Often you feel like you’re walking towards nothing,” says Antonio Gamez, holiday operations manager for the National Trust, who oversees the maintenance of its bunkhouses, bothies and campsites across Wales. Bothies have no running water, no bathroom, no heating nor electricity. But they’re increasingly popular as places for enthusiastic hikers and cyclists – and David Beckham, who stayed in one for his 50th birthday in May – to camp out overnight. “Stepping away from the busyness of our contemporary lives, and going somewhere remote and beautiful… it forces you to be present,” says Kat Hill, author of Bothy: In Search Of Simple Shelter (Harper Collins). There’s a yearning for simplicity; people want to disconnect and have real experiences.
The primitive existence a bothy offers can be a salve. Especially when a series of them are strung together in a multi-day walk: my pre-planned route through the Cambrians will total 42 miles, with 5,000ft of elevation. “Travelling through places on foot, and staying as you go… it feels like it harks back to history,” says Lawrence Showell, holidays area manager at the National Trust. For today’s traveller, “bothying” is effectively camping without the need to own an arsenal of equipment. The only challenge lies in the need to be self-sufficient and carry everything you require. It forces you to refine what is actually essential – whether in life or just overnight. “It’s definitely not for everyone,” says Gamez. But “once you see the rusty roof, stone walls and little windows… it lights your path”. If the weather’s bad, chances are it also lights up your soul.
Bothying is a peculiarly British tradition. “There’s a mysticism around these huts,” says Gamez. Most were originally homes on remote estates or built as shelters to protect shepherds and gamekeepers from harsh mountain conditions such as weather fronts. In 1940s postwar Britain, farms were traded for cities offering better job prospects, and the introduction of cars made everything more accessible. Hiking became a common hobby for those wishing to escape; bothies on abandoned farmlands became a grassroots trend. Their ancient walls are a warden of stories; tucked up in your sleeping bag, you can’t help but imagine a cosmic affinity with those who have rested their heads in here before.
Today there are around 120 bothies across the UK. The Mountain Bothies Association, set up in 1965, maintains 105, while the National Trust operates 11. In Wales, where I’m now appreciating a dewy morning mist that hovers low in the fields, only 11 remain. There is something profound in the fact that these huts, located on teeny parcels of land, are so few and far between, as well as being tiny; most are smaller than the average bedroom. More precious still is that around 90 per cent of them are free of charge and, with the exception of those in the National Trust, you can’t make a reservation. “You just turn up and hope for the best,” says Simon Birch, chair of The Mountain Bothies Association.
Walking for days on end feels antiquated today. In seven hours, you can fly 3,500 miles from New York to London; the same amount of time will see you clearing a few miles across undulating terrain in Wales. The hike I’m on partly includes the Monks’ Trod, an ancient byway between two abbeys developed by 12th-century Cistercian monks. Back then it was a route from A to B; a straightforward journey of logistics. Now, it’s almost impossible to ignore the pilgrimage aspect. “You’re out there in virtual silence,” says Gamez, who himself spends a good deal of time in the Elan Valley. “You have a lot of time with your thoughts.”
Tourists to this part of Wales typically visit Snowdonia; the Cambrian mountains, says Gamez, are known as “the desert of Wales”. “It’s just moorland so it’s really undiscovered. It’s wild horses and vast open landscapes.” The Cambrians are gentler than their better-known counterparts. But what they lack in dramatic ridge-scapes they make up for with an enveloping sense of quiet. The land in spring is filled with browns, ochres and greens. In late summer, the moors are tinted lavender with heather; in autumn, they turn rusty with bracken. Walking in the monks’ footsteps, listening to the thud of your feet, is a journey that can approach the spiritual. It can also be boring, depending on the hour. But this too is novel – how often are we mindlessly bored any more?
Hill, the author, first started bothying when she was going through a tumultuous time in life. “I was looking for meaning,” she says. “There’s something incredible about the fact that most bothies are unlocked, but people really look after them. There’s this collective care sometimes lacking in the modern world. You take your supplies in and take your rubbish out to make sure it’s nice for the people who come after.” Everyone I meet has a different essential: some bring chocolate, others earplugs. For Hill, it’s a head torch. Birch takes whisky. “Sometimes people offer you a cup of tea,” he says. “It’s a great spirit of hospitality.”
In a bothy in the Elan Valley I find kindling, firelighters and candles left by previous guests. I leave behind a lighter and a box of matches; my travel companion leaves a novel. There’s mutual stewardship and generosity, a tradition fostered by the guest books – a bothy ritual. “The human compulsion to leave a trace is deep,” says the National Trust’s Showell. “In some of our bothies, you can see names carved into the beams. They’re not modern; they’re really old.” Tracing a decades-old scrawling on the wall with my fingertip, I’m touched by a sense of togetherness with a lad called Paul. I wonder how old he is now.
These scratches of humanity “remind you how small you really are”, says Gamez. “It’s important to step back and get a bigger picture. Work can often feel so overwhelming, but nobody’s going to remember a deadline. People will always remember a landscape, and they’ll always remember people.” Prior to arriving, I had been anxious about the whole thing: would I be scared? Who would be there? What if I wanted to leave in the middle of the night? There’s no quick exit route. It’s an out-of-comfort-zone experience, and one that you need to be in the right headspace for.
Out on the hills in my pyjamas, I’m joined by another early riser and we decide to make coffee. She fetches a small picnic blanket. I dig out my Snow Peak collapsible coffee dripper and a bag of freshly ground beans. Together we watch the wide skies turn from pink to a steely, sunny blue. A bothy will teach you what you deem fundamental in life; a good coffee at daybreak is one of mine. Sitting there, I’m reminded that conversation, deep connection and the promise of adventure are what fuel me. I feel emotional. In life, as in Wales, when it rains, it pours.
The Mountain Bothies Association, mountainbothies.org.uk. National Trust, nationaltrust.org.uk. The Cambrian Way, cambrianway.org.uk. Komoot route planner, komoot.com
