The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Bothies – the new word in off-grid luxury
Fridges? Solar panels? Wood-fired hot tubs? Shepherds’ huts in the Highlands have come a long way from their roots, says Lucy Gillmore
As the light began to fade on an autumnal evening in Scotland, Michael sputtered down the track to the bothy in what looked like a golf buggy on steroids to collect me for dinner. On arrival in the farmyard, he showed me to my table – crisp cloth, candles, flowers – in a 16th-century byre and grabbed his apron. Alcoves in the rough walls twinkled with tea lights, the floor was a thick bed of straw with blankets to ward off the chill and sheepskins were strewn on chairs: it was less Scandi-cool, more cowshed-chic.
Michael Thompson is chauffeur, chef and sommelier in one. He has toiled in some of London’s starriest kitchens alongside chefs such as Jason Atherton, Simon Rogan and Richard Corrigan – but somehow he wound up here, on Inverlonan, a remote estate on the west coast of the country, cooking over fire among the derelict farm buildings and conjuring up an exquisite eight-course tasting menu.
The first plate was an array of tiny raw and pickled vegetables from the garden: a carrot with a fava bean miso, a lightly fermented sugar snap. Next, line-caught Scottish mackerel pickled with rose vinegar. By flickering candlelight I scooped up scallop roe mousse with warm fermented potato bread, so light it dissolved on the tongue, and speared a giant crab dumpling swimming in a lightly spiced broth. Dessert was “birch sap and wood sorrel”, a hand-churned cinder toffee-tinged ice cream made with syrup tapped from local birch trees. Michael even made the plates.
This is what off-grid luxury should be. Careering home in the dark beneath a wide-angled, star-punctured sky, Michael wove tales of an exciting “green” future for the estate – the artisan bakery and ecological boutique hotel soon to take shape in the abandoned farm building, the fields planted with heritage grains.
The bothy I stayed in, Uisge (pronounced Oosh-ka), is one of two architect-designed off-grid huts shaded by ancient oaks on the shore of Loch Nell – accessible only by boat, buggy or on foot. Beatha, the other, is just up the hill. The exterior is corten-clad and rust-hued, the interiors straight out of a design magazine – a vision of local larch and glass.
It may be off-grid, with a state-ofthe-art compost toilet in a shed, a wood burner providing heat and a hot plate for cooking and boiling water, but there is light at the flick of a switch (powered by solar panels). It’s a far cry from traditional bothy living.
Originally bare-bones shelters for shepherds gathering in the sheep and, more recently, mountain hikers, now – due to our growing desire to escape the digital world – hideaways offering a new kind of luxury are springing up all over the Highlands.
Conservation-focused Wildland, the group of estates owned by Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, has commissioned Edinburgh-based GRAS architects to design four futuristic off-grid bothies in Sutherland, with Dualchas lined up to design two more for the Glenfeshie estate in the Cairngorms.
The Infield, Guardswell Farm, Perthshire
On a 170-acre farm in Perthshire, workshops are held in the old farm buildings and you can bed down in a handful of cute cabins off-grid. The Infield is a short schlep uphill, with solar panels providing light (there are no sockets), plus a wood-burning stove and log stash and two gas hobs for cooking along with a firepit.
Inshriach Log House, Cairngorms National Park
The Log House was Walter Micklethwait’s lockdown project. Inshriach, a 200-acre estate near Aviemore, is the real off-grid deal, a cabin from the lumberjack school. There are tea light lanterns, a wood burner and a ladder up to bed in the eaves. The shower is in a neighbouring field. Walter also makes award-winning gin in a Wild West-style shed. Sleeps two, from £120 per night; inshriachhouse.com; canopyandstars.co.uk
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Woodman’s Hut, Lazy Duck, Nethy Bridge
This little eco-hut in the woods is hidden away among the Scots pines in the heart of the Cairngorms. There’s a cosy box bed, wood-burning stove and hammock strung between
Sweeney’s Bothy, Eigg
In 2011, architect Iain MacLeod and artist Bobby Niven founded the Bothy Project, a network of off-grid artist residency spaces in remote locations including this rough-luxury bolthole on the off-grid Hebridean isle of Eigg. There’s a solar panel-powered open-air spring water shower, wood-burning stove, organic wool duvet, a library snug and compost loo.
Sleeps two, from £200 for a two-night stay; eiggtime.com
Shepherd’s Cottage, Eilean Shona
Hole up on Eilean Shona, Vanessa Branson’s road-free 1,260-acre private island, where you will find a clutch of cute cottages – three of which are off-grid. Shepherd’s Cottage is a 45-minute hike round the coast with views out towards the islands of Eigg and Rum. There’s no electricity – wallmounted gas lamps provide light, the traditional stove heat and hot water – and the roll-top tub is perfect for hot peaty candlelit soaks.
Sleeps two, from £1,100 per week; eileanshona.com
The idea behind them is to create spaces where guests can disconnect from the world and reconnect with nature – with a smattering of creature comforts. At Inverlonan there is no Wi-Fi by design, though there are rogue pockets of 4G. In the “Bothy Bible”, there is a suggestion to “throw your phone in the loch” if it all gets too much.
There’s an element of hard work but no hardship involved in this new breed of bothy – which also hinges on time. It’s all about slow living and slowing down. Daily tasks such as grinding the coffee beans, pumping (metaphorically) water and stoking the stove to brew the coffee all take time – leaving no time to worry about the outside world.
Inverlonan’s bothies are the brainchild of former barrister Lupi Moll, whose family have been the caretaker of this land (1,400 acres) for more than a century. There’s a stone circle here dating back to 2000 BC along with a 13thcentury standing stone, ancient burial grounds and chambered cairns, but the estate is looking towards the future.
In the morning, I brewed coffee on the stove and heated the water for the Australian bush shower (a large canvas bag you hang on a hook outside) and bathed naked in the wilderness,
shielded by bowing branches from the lone kayaker paddling past. Then I breakfasted on coffee and honeysmeared bread before heading to my next off-grid hideaway nearby.
Inverlonan is not the only west coast estate treading more lightly on the planet. Just a pebble’s throw from Loch Nell, the Croft Collective is Lochnell Estate’s venture into off-grid luxury living. Fuarachadh (F-ure-a-key), a crofter’s cottage bedded into a hillside above a private beach, is the first of the old estate buildings to be done up (there are plans for more) and offers blissful off-grid seclusion.
Inside its one open-plan room, the floor is rough – not polished – concrete with a wood burner at one end and a handcrafted kitchen at the other. A ladder leads up to an attic bedroom, the floorboards and sloping ceiling painted white. The croft is lit by hurricane lanterns, but there is a fridge and a cooker powered by bottled gas – and a flushing toilet (“none of this compostable stuff,” says the blurb – off-grid can be fluid enough to include a septic tank). There is also a burnished copper monsoon shower in a shed – although who would choose that over a woodfired open-air bathtub? Other pampering touches include a picnic hamper of local produce, a basket of fruit and veg from the castle’s garden and a bottle of prosecco for a sunset soak.
“This was old Babs’s croft,” Archie Cochrane, whose family live in the castle, told me as we strode up the hill. “She lived here with her sister, they had a vegetable patch, a few sheep and cows.” After she died, it fell derelict and as a boy he would camp up here.
The croft conversion was his idea, completed in the summer, and flicking through the guest book it appears to have been the first off-grid experience for most guests. I read of plans to explore farther afield being abandoned, the lure of staying put in this bucolic corner too strong; days spent beachcombing, swimming, watching seals, foraging in the woods, sea kayaking, lighting campfires and stargazing. The talk is all of clearing minds, physical and mental resets, recharging – and that bath.
Under a sycamore tree facing out to sea, a starlit dunk was off the cards. It was blowing a hooley, the rain unrelenting, but morning dawned crisp and clear.
Dragging the hose over, I filled the tub with Scottish rainwater, scooping out the autumn leaves floating gently down, and lit a fire underneath. In a fluffy white robe and slippers, I gazed out at the shimmering horizon as waves crashed on the shore below and flames licked up the sides. Sipping my freshly brewed coffee, I sat back to wait. With all the time in the world.
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