Read more
Pocket guide celebrating the bothies of England, Scotland and Wales: a network of huts, cottages and shelters - often in remote mountainous locations - that are completely free to use. The author presents a selection of 26 of her favourite bothies, with notes on access, water, facilities, history and wildlife-spotting opportunities.
- Advice on how to use bothies and bothy etiquette
- Routes (with mapping) to all of the 26 bothies featured, plus suggestions for what to do when you get there (including nearby hills you might climb)
- A history of bothies
- Personal recollections of visits to the 26 bothies
- Taigh Seumas a' Ghlinne (Glen Coe), Ben Alder Cottage, Ruigh Aiteachain, Ryvoan, Shenavall, Warnscale Head, Greg's Hut and Nant Syddion
- The majority of bothies are in the Scottish Highlands, but the guide also includes bothies in Dumfries and Galloway, Northumberland, the Pennines, the Lake District, Snowdonia, Mid-Wales and the Brecon Beacons
About the author
By day Phoebe Smith is an award-winning travel writer, broadcaster and presenter as well as Editor-at-Large of Wanderlust travel magazine and Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence at calm.com where she writes scripts for the likes of Stephen Fry, Joanne Lumley and Danai Gurira. By night she’s an extreme-sleeping outdoors adventurer who thrives on heading to the wildest locations she can find in order to sleep in the strangest places she can seek out.
Phoebe was the first person to sleep at all the extreme points of mainland Britain – including the centremost location – which she did solo, on consecutive nights in 2014. In December 2017 she gave up her Christmas to complete the self-devised Sleep the Three Peaks challenge – in which she overnighted on the summits of the highest mountains in Wales, England and Scotland – raising both money and awareness for Centrepoint (the young people’s homeless charity).
Phoebe is the author of 10 books including the bestselling Extreme Sleeps: Adventures of a Wild Camper, Wilderness Weekends: Wild Adventures in Britain's Rugged Corners and the first guidebook to Britain’s free-to-stay mountain shelters, Book of the Bothy.
Phoebe has proudly been an Ordnance Survey #GetOutside Champion since 2016 in recognition of her work encouraging people to enjoy the great outdoors. She is ambassador for the annual Big Canopy Campout (which helps raise funds for the World Land Trust), as well as Wild Night Out, the UK’s national night of adventure. She is also President of the Long Distance Walkers Association. Phoebe’s ongoing mission is to prove that Britain offers adventure to rival anything you’ll find overseas and that you don’t need to be a beard-sporting, rufty-tufty, I’ll-eat-a-dead-sheep-carcass Bear Grylls-type to have an adventure!
Summary
A celebration of 26 of the author's favourite bothies, as she shares her memories of her favourite 'stone tents' all over the UK in remote and wild locations. Packed with expert advice on how to make use of these 'free, old, empty houses', from packing lists to bothy etiquette and the best walks into these remote locations.
