Mountain Bothies Association

A Talk by Peter Rowell of the Mountain Bothies Association

Taking on a disused building in Druimnashallag located in the Loch Avich forestry area, south east of Oban and making it into an MBA bothy. The transforming effect on the bothy and subsequent level of use.

Scotland has a rich history of mountain bothy architecture, habitation and preservation. Ownership and availability of these bothies resides in many organisations. The Mountain Bothy Association (MBA) was founded in 1965 by a visionary couple, Betty and Bernard Heath, who showed us the way ahead. The MBA currently maintains over 100 bothies in Scotland, Wales and England and these are freely available to all who love wild and lonely places. Whilst some are lost to the MBA, new ones become available. This talk will focus on a new project taking a disused building in Argyll and making it into an MBA bothy. Druimnashallag is located in the Loch Avich forestry area, south east of Oban.

These projects have a transforming effect on the bothy and their subsequent level of use. The covid years affected us all in many different ways. It severely impacted on the number of maintenance work parties traditionally held by the MBA. However, this gave the MBA time and an opportunity to do something different. They used this time to analyse available bothy books and produced some interesting observations.

Peter will share some of these with us. He will conclude the talk by looking ahead and shining a light on the next large projects the MBA are currently considering.