A hike between bothies – one old, one new – in the Cairngorms fosters a sense of community among strangers sheltering in the Highland wilderness
ark in the Linn of Dee carpark near Braemar and you can hike to two bothies. One path takes you through winding valleys into the heart of the Cairngorms to Corrour, built originally in 1877 and reconstructed in 1949. Or you can follow the River Dee’s glittering expanse on its path down the mountains to the Red House, the’s most recent addition, which opened last year. The two places represent the bothy world past and present.
My partner and I are in the Cairngorms for a few days in changeable weather. Cloud gives way to rain, which turns to misty snow. But for a while the sun appears and the mountains glow white against brilliant skies, their lower slopes fading to russet. We arrive at Corrour, a small bothy below the Devil’s Point that comfortably sleeps five or six but often hosts many more as hikers grab any spare scrap of floor.
Because you normally walk to a bothy, you experience the world in a particular way. The striding rhythm loosens tongues, and I have spent many happy hours walking with friends to bothies. Walking side-by-side, you notice the landscapeWe enter the bothy, which has yet to acquire the layered smell of fires and damp. Freshly panelled walls have a workshop’s sap-filled aroma. But socks hanging by the fire to dry signal that it won’t be long before the Red House has that traditional bothy fragrance.
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