The accountant who created a network of mountain bothies
Bernard Heath 1928-2022
In 1965, Bernard Heath stopped off at a bothy during a cycling trip through the hills of Galloway, said The Guardian.
In its visitors’ book, he was struck by a comment expressing dismay that so many of these basic shelters – abandoned shepherds’ cottages and gamekeepers’ huts – were falling into ruin, and wishing there was an organisation that could take the matter in hand. Heath, an accountant, decided that this was a project for him. That summer, he and some friends restored the bothy at Tunskeen, and around that time, the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) was born. Its volunteers now maintain over
100 shelters in remote parts of Britain, “for the use and benefit of all who love wild and lonely places”. These shelters are very basic: visitors are warned that there is “no tap, no sink, no beds, no lights and, even if there is a fireplace, perhaps nothing to burn”. But millions of people have stayed in them, said The Scotsman, and they have also saved quite a few lives.
Bernard Heath was born in Huddersfield in 1928, the son of an engineers’ tool inspector. He left school at 16, and after National Service, trained as a management accountant. He then taught at a technical college in Thurso; but his passion was for cycling. Determined to improve cycling opportunities for the postwar generation, he helped found the Huddersfield Star Wheelers cycling club in 1953, and in 1955 the Rough Stuff Fellowship – the first club for off-road cyclists. For years, he spent his summer holidays touring upland Britain with a friend, exploring almost every Highland glen with a tent on his back. He went further afield too: in 1958, he crossed Iceland’s interior by bike. On his travels he often stayed in bothies, and when he founded the MBA, he was convinced that – unlike the walkers’ huts found in European countries – these shelters should continue to be in pre-existing buildings, to minimise the impact on the landscape. Although he had a full-time job, he organised the restoration of 15 buildings in four years. The “model” was simple: relying on the goodwill of local landowners, and seeking to make no demands of them, the MBA would simply ask for permission to maintain an abandoned building “for the time being”. It worked: all those 15 bothies are still in use today.
At the inaugural meeting of the MBA, he had been introduced to Betty Taylor, with the words “and here’s your first woman member”. Their backgrounds were very different – she was the privately educated daughter of a banker – but they shared a love for the wilds: she was a great hill walker and climber. They fell in love during the restoration of a bothy, and following their marriage in 1970 they formed such a close partnership in running the MBA that they were referred to as B&B. In 1991, they had the unusual double honour of both being awarded British Empire Medals for their charitable work. Betty died last year.