The purpose of todays Wednesday walk was to visit the new Mountain Bothy opened at Greensykes up Meggat water. It has taken several years for the volunteers from the MBA to get this opened but it is a superb Bothy and well worth a visit. We parked the car at the Thomas Telford Memorial Car Park at Glendinning and headed up the Forestry road to the east of the Meggat and up the valley of the Hairgrain Burn which is a total of 7.5 miles circular.
After about 4.5 miles the Bothy comes into view and it has been well roofed and re built, although there is still a bit of work still to be done especially clearing up outside as they have knocked down some of the outhouses.
In this photograph the Bothy looks perfect but hidden from view is all the rubble outside which is still to be cleared.
Inside it is fairly basic with 3 rooms. This is the first room you enter and when we arrived we found the room to be very warm and then realised the wood burning stove was still on. On looking at the visitors book we discovered two people from Edinburgh had spent last night in the Bothy and just left a few hours before we arrived. We stuck a couple more logs on the excellent Wood Burning Stove and enjoyed our packed lunch in real style in cumfortable chairs and with a grand fire giving off a good heat. The other two rooms are bedrooms with sort of platforms for beds and in one of them there is an open fire and two comfortable chairs. There is of course no electricity although plenty of candles and plenty of wood stacked and drying for the fires. At the moment there is no toilet but that will be built next year. In the visitors book we were amazed to see how many people have stayed there in the few months it has been open.
Some of the visitors to the Bothy have been Mountain Bikers as there are superb forestry roads in the area and this must make it very attractive for Bikers. The comments left by last nights visitors was that it was an excellent escape from Christmas shopping. If I had to stay the night I think you would need a nice bottle of whisky to help you sleep as the beds looked a bit hard.
2 comments:
Looks like a home from home. I meant to cycle round there this year but never got round to it.
Nice to know this sort of accommodation is being provided locally. More old buildings of this type should be utilised for various purposes.
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