Once-friendly shelter gone for good
The Glenbeag hut as it was before the fire, with a perfect rainbow helping to set the scene.
THE heat had been so intense that the glass in the windows had melted into stalactite shapes before the metal frames fell out. A fine, wood-panelled hut with four rooms and a hallway had become a heap of twisted corrugated iron. Virtually every bit of wood – floors, ceilings, walls, roof timbers – had been totally consumed by the fire.
There were two buildings at Glenbeag. A low, stone-built cottage comprising two small living rooms and a store room, and a more recent hut, probably built in the early 20th century. The former would have been lived in by a shepherd until a hundred or so years ago, the latter would have been comfortably furnished for shooting parties in the 1920s and ’30s but abandoned later. In the early 1970s, with the owner’s permission, the Mountain Bothies Association renovated the cottage for use as an open bothy and then took over maintenance of the hut in 2000.
Glenbeag is your archetypal mountain bothy. It’s pretty much as remote as you’ll get, in a high glen many miles from the nearest public road surrounded by rugged mountains rising to 3500 feet. You can, though, take a mountain bike to within a couple of miles along roads left over from the heyday of the 1950s hydro works; it’s then a wet and largely pathless walk to the bothy. Only the true connoisseurs of wild mountain country reach this secluded spot.
The burnt-out remains of the hut – probably the victim of a lightning strike.
Although the stone cottage was the official bothy, most visitors used the hut which was much lighter with many windows and a small stove which efficiently heated one of the rooms. A report had come in that the hut had been destroyed by fire; as one who helps to look after the bothy, I went out to look.

HE approach to Glenbeag is one I always like – a route through increasingly wild and empty country. You set off on the bike from the end of Strath Carron, near Croick church about 10 miles west of Bonar Bridge. This is lush Highland estate woodland, teeming with birds, cuckoos calling. You cycle through the Alladale Estate (twinned with Jurassic Park) passing high electrified fences bearing the warning "Keep Out. Dangerous Wild Animals", meeting the odd estate vehicle which could have come straight out of the movie other than advertising "Alladale Wilderness Lodge" instead of dinosaurs.
The classic landscape of Scots pine and rushing, rocky rivers opens out into Glen More, once bare, now being planted with millions of native trees. Miles on, usually slow miles into a headwind howling down the deep U-shaped valley, you climb round a corner, cross a bridge and bounce through the potholes to the little Deanich Lodge, now often let out to rich stressed-out businessmen or eco/green/fashionable environmental groups.
Beyond, a steep stony track climbs to the hydro road which leads on up the shelterless glen beside fine river rapids to end at a small wooden hut which has somehow survived the years as the only windbreak for miles. Now it is just a couple of rough, soggy miles on foot to the bothy– a trace of a quad-bike track helps. Across the river is a hillside of gigantic piled boulders and small birch woods out of the Lost World. The final obstacle is a fast-flowing tributary roaring down from the crags above, always awkward to cross and sometimes impassable.
RECKON it was probably lightning. The hut was photographed by a visitor as fine on April 29 and had been destroyed by May 7. From April 29 through to May 3/4 was an exceptionally dry spell. If the fire had happened then it would likely have set the grass and rushes in the glen on fire. However, the scorched area is confined to within a yard or two of the hut, suggesting the weather was wet when the fire occurred. Very sad, but nothing anyone can do. At least the stone bothy is fine. So having arrived, and poked around and made sure nobody had been caught in the building by the fire, there was still time for a hill-walk before the forecast rain came on.
A moorland landscape of peat-hags gives way to rocky outcrops and grass higher up, and the crags of Cona Mheall.
I wandered on up the glen in the early afternoon sunshine, to where the remains of a shieling sat by a stream tumbling in waterfalls from the ridge above. Steep slopes led up to a fine view down the long glen and on into golden plover country of high grassland and rocky outcrops.
The hot late-April sun, a couple of weeks earlier, had brought on the early alpines with occasional clusters of the tiny pink mountain azalea and the dwarf cornel with its four white bracts. A simple steady walk led to the crest of Seana Bhraigh, one of the remoter Munros, where the plateau gives way to huge crags falling away to the north and distant views to the hills of Sutherland and Caithness.
The sky had turned grey, the peaks of Assynt and Wester Ross disappearing into a haze of rain, the Summer Isles west of Ullapool glimpsed briefly against a darkening sky. Above, high above, slowly circling on outstretched wings was a buzzard… no, not a buzzard but a golden eagle. In increasing rain I made my way back to the bothy by the sad ruins of the hut.
ALES and squalls forecast for the next morning hadn’t arrived, giving another opportunity to nip up the hill before heading out. Waterfalls roared down the gorge behind the bothy, with birch and rowan growing in craggy recesses which browsing deer can’t reach. Yellow celandine splashed the grass at the foot of the falls. Above, a moorland landscape of peat-hags gives way to rocky outcrops and grass higher up. Steep rocks fall away on both sides of the broad ridge, with dramatic views down to remote Loch Tuath and Loch Prille below the crags of Cona Mheall. Some six miles to the south, down a long, rough glen, is the main Ullapool road – from which this high ridge might be glimpsed as a distant, beckoning skyline. A place to sit and savour the privilege of being able to reach this wild spot and having this whole stretch of mountain country to myself.
As the wind picked up I headed back down the glen, collecting the bike from the little wooden hut. Showers were coming in, too, the end of the glen turning a threatening grey as I bounced down over the loose stones to Deanich.
Whatever party was staying seemed to be spending the day indoors; the generator was running and the lights on. Why on earth make all that effort to get out here and then spend a perfectly good day inside? You could do that back in the city!
A patch of dwarf cornel, encouraged to flower by April’s warm weather.
The shower hit with the wind gusting up to a gale just as I reached the narrows in the glen where the track crosses the river. I had to get off and wheel the bike or risk being blown off the bridge into the water – the driving rain felt like it was going in one ear and out the other. Then, with the wind behind, I almost coasted down the glen, my fastest ever descent of Glen Mor – too fast to see anything other than the stony track ahead. The sun soon came out again in the lee of the hills, with lush scents of birch and pine and a cuckoo calling around the tamed environs of Alladale Lodge.
The former Alladale bothy, where you used to be able to stay for free, has been converted into a very plush cottage – a party of four now pays £450 per night in mid-season. One of the activities the estate "puts on" is mountain biking. No more needs to be said about some folk having more money than sense!
The mess of corrugated iron from the burnt-out hut will need tidying up but I left it alone in case anyone wishes to investigate properly. Once the site is cleared, the glen will actually look a lot better; the hut was always something of an eyesore.
But a friendly shelter from what can be apocalyptic highland mountain weather has gone for good.