Читать книгу The Book of the Bothy онлайн

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This usually works well in the mountains, normally ensures that even when weather makes things confusing, I manage to hold my own and get myself in and out of any situation safely. But if there’s one thing that strikes real fear in me when planning my route, it’s those patches of green that denote forestry land.

I grew up with a pretty patch of woodland behind me – a proper old, oak-filled pocket of wizen trees. I’d spent hours climbing them, running under them and making dens among them. But forestry ones are different. Never have I walked through one and not got lost as the path deviates wildly from what is shown on the OS map.

Unfortunately my trip to this historical bothy was no different. I set off late, knowing the walk-in would be short. How wrong I was. It all started badly to be fair. The route I wanted to take from the car park was roped off, a cartoon forestry working telling me that work was in progress and too dangerous for me to traverse. So I went the other way.

It felt right at first – path junction where it was supposed to be, gradient kicking in where it was meant to. But then the next junction never came. The path just seemed to keep heading upwards, then it swung round to the left; the turning I was waiting for – shown on the map to be a blatant T-junction – needed me to turn right. And that wasn’t the only thing that was wrong. I was going higher up too – higher than I felt I should be. Then I reached the age-old dilemma – turn back now and try and search for the missed junction, or continue and hope it would all turn out right. Stupidly I did the latter and soon realised I must have overshot it. Looking at the path I figured out how I should be able to make it right, but then felled trees blocked the path – and I was losing daylight. Refusing at all costs to go back I clambered over the trunks and limbo-ed under others as they creaked, keeping my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t choose that moment to fall. Then all of a sudden – the trees were gone.