I wake to a lingering dampness. The air feels cold – and thick, as if it’s heaving with the historic breath of every hiker who has ever spent the night here. There are bodies in sleeping bags scattered around; they look like multicoloured logs. I roll onto my side, and pick up my phone to check my Oura sleep score. No service.
I wouldn’t say it was a comfortable night’s rest. It’s 5am and I slept in a bothy, an ancient farmland refuge deep in the heart of Wales. My back feels stiff, as it should considering I’m lying on a wooden bench without a mattress. The space is sparse; the sound of sleep bounces off the old stone walls. I’m suddenly restless. I give in to the urge to unzip; I need some air. Grabbing my walking boots and my bag, I stagger outside. The sky is tinted ombre; the earth is cool. I’m by myself, wearing cotton pyjamas and a cable-knit sweater, in the Cambrian mountains. A distant birdsong trills. For a second, I feel like the only person on the planet.
Wet kit dries in front of the log-burner in Claerddu bothy in the Cambrian Mountains, Wales © Julian Broad
A view of the Cambrian Mountains from the road © Julian Broad
Nothing worth having comes easy: the phrase rings especially true when it comes to overnighting in a bothy. The day before, I’d hiked 15 miles with a heavy backpack full of supplies to bed down for the night in what is effectively a stone-walled tent; today, I’ll repeat the process as part of a point-to-point bothy-hop through the Cambrians. As a trip, at times it will be enjoyable, at others, arduous. “Often you feel like you’re walking towards nothing,” says Antonio Gamez, holiday operations manager for the National Trust, who oversees the maintenance of its bunkhouses, bothies and campsites across Wales. Bothies have no running water, no bathroom, no heating nor electricity. But they’re increasingly popular as places for enthusiastic hikers and cyclists – and David Beckham, who stayed in one for his 50th birthday in May – to camp out overnight. “Stepping away from the busyness of our contemporary lives, and going somewhere remote and beautiful… it forces you to be present,” says Kat Hill, author of Bothy: In Search Of Simple Shelter (Harper Collins). There’s a yearning for simplicity; people want to disconnect and have real experiences.
