Black Sail Hut
As remote as it gets in the English Lake District, the mountains hereabouts are nevertheless readily accessible for the fell walker. This hut sits below the Great Gable massif and Wainwright’s favourite fell, Haystacks. Well found and comfortable, it is a 5½-mile walk from the nearest road. Bunks can be booked through the Youth Hostel Association.
Halford’s Fishing Hut
Used by F. M. Halford, the ‘father of dry fly fishing’, this hut lies on the banks of the River Test within the National Trust-owned Mottisfont Abbey estate in Hampshire. Largely unchanged since his death in 1914, it is a simple, thatched, one-room hut that is redolent of the Edwardian heyday on our chalkstreams.
The Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut
The CIC Hut is regarded as Britain’s only true Alpine hut. Ben Nevis’s awesome north-east face rises steeply above and is clearly the preserve of seasoned mountaineers. However, the nearby Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête offers a more manageable, but still airy route to Britain’s highest summit. The hut has restricted access and must be booked through the Scottish Mountaineering Club.
Haughton Green Bothy
Northumberland National Park is designated as a Dark Sky Park and the place to best gaze upon the observable universe from the UK (binoculars help). Haughton Green Bothy lies towards the southern edge of the park and is a sound, stone-built building complete with woodburning stove and composting lavatory. It is a relatively comfortable location to take in the Milky Way. One needs to walk in, but it lies less than a mile off the Pennine Way and within three miles of the Roman Housestead’s Fort on Hadrian’s Wall.
Suileag Bothy
Britain has no country that is wilder or more spectacular than Assynt in Scotland’s far north-west. The Suileag Bothy lies in the heart of this wilderness of burns, lochans and improbable-looking peaks, the most spectacular of which is Suilven, which can be readily climbed by a fit walker. It is also surrounded by a range of trout fishing in this post-glacial, flooded landscape, all of which is accessible from this sound, albeit basic shelter.
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