Mountain refuges fall prey to stag parties and vandals

REMOTE mountain bothies should become restricted sites, hillwalkers have said, as they claimed huts have become increasingly misused by stag parties and adventure groups.

Landowners in Scotland have received a series of anonymous poison pen letters demanding shelters should no longer be advertised on the Mountain Bothy Association (MBA) website.

The MBA, a Scottish registered charity, maintains around 100 free-to-use bothies across faraway swathes of Scotland, Wales and northern England which remain open to the public for most of the year.

The shelters were originally built as a refuge for gamekeepers and deer stalking parties without basic requirements such as electricity, running water and lavatories. Commercial use is prohibited, but walkers claim bothies have become increasingly occupied and misused by guided tours and adventure seekers on holidays, owing their rising popularity to features in magazines and TV documentaries and following the publication of The Scottish Bothy Bible by Geoff Allan.

In September, a popular bothy in the Cairngorms was allegedly vandalised. Letters, said to be addressed from “grassroots” supporters, have now demanded an end to the “commercialisation” of the huts.

However, senior figures within the MBA have hit back at the unknown authors, with one trustee, Neil Reid, dismissing the critics as “poisonous liars”.

The issue came to a head at the MBA’s AGM last month, when a motion tabled to ban the charity from working with groups that advertise bothies was narrowly defeated.