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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE

‘The bothy embrace is addictive’ ADAM NICOLSON

‘Will have you reaching for your boots’ CAL FLYN

The door to the bothy is always unlocked, you just need to step inside.

A bothy is a remote hut in the wilderness that you can’t reserve, with no electricity, mod-cons or running water. And it’s here you’ll find Kat Hill – kettle on, feet up and pen out.

Leading us on a gorgeous and erudite journey around the UK, Kat reveals the history of these wild mountain shelters and the people who visit them. With a historian’s insight and a rambler’s imagination, she lends fresh consideration to the concepts of nature, wilderness and escape. All the while, Kat weaves together her story of heartbreak and new purpose with those of her fellow wanderers, past and present.

Writing with warmth, wit and infectious wanderlust, Kat moves from a hut in an active military training area in the far-north of Scotland to a fairy-tale cottage in Wales. Along her travels, she explores the conflict between our desire to preserve isolated beauty and the urge to share it with others – embodied by the humble bothy.

Bothy is a stirring, beautiful book for anyone who longs to run away to the wilds.

Publisher Review

EARLY PRAISE FOR BOTHY

‘An intelligent and thoughtful book that will have you reaching for your boots. Hill offers learned and considered reflections on the consolations of retreat, simple living, of finding even temporary shelter when all outside is tempest. It is also a meditation on change: climate change, emotional growth, and the unquenchable nostalgia for a past slipping ever further from view’

Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

‘Marvellous… It would be difficult to think of a subtler or more careful exploration of the wrinkles of modern life and modern nature, with all its traps, delights, delusions and possibilities.

Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides

‘A questing, atmospheric collection of meditations of the essential nature of bothy life. A book steeped in dubbin, wood smoke, lanolin, and love of wild places, Kat Hill’s hymn to the humble highland hut will delight and inform armchair travellers, weekend walkers, and veteran rough-stuffers alike’

Dan Richards, co-author of Holloway

‘You can’t imagine just how much I loved the book. The honesty, the curiosity, the celebration and exploration all I wanted to do was to sneak under my covers and keep reading… the universality underneath the particularity is going to strike a chord with so many readers’

Sophie Howarth, author of Looking at Trees and co-founder of The School of Life