"Did you ever see that film Into the Wild?" asked my friend Helen, looking a bit nervous.
"The one about the man who gets eaten by bears?"
"No, the one where he goes to Alaska, kills a moose, fails to save its meat from some wolves, then eats a wild berry and poisons himself to death."
Our patch of wilderness was in fact only four miles from Aviemore, in the Cairngorms national park, but the cabin we were staying in had been specifically designed for visitors seeking isolation and a self-sufficient, back-to-nature experience in the great Scottish outdoors. A one-room hut with a platform bed, table, bench seat, sofa, sink and stove, the corrugated iron bothy crouches like a minimalist doll's house in a secluded birch- and bracken-speckled dell.
Stoking the fire and lighting candle lanterns in the all-but-silent gloaming, we felt miles from civilisation, But the dell is in a far corner of the grounds of Inshriach House (inshriachhouse.com), a sensitively and sustainably restored Edwardian manor originally built by the A&C Black publishing family but now run as a large holiday home by former antiques dealer turned set designer and all-round handyman Walter Micklethwait and his mother Lucy, a children's author.
The Micklethwaits already have experience in catering for off-grid guests, renting out a yurt in another corner of the grounds, and a pimped-up 1950s lorry, the Beer Moth, that has been converted into a campervan for two, with parquet floor, woodburning stove and Victorian brass-framed double bed. There is also temporary camping for around 800 people each June when Inshriach plays host to The Insider festival (insiderfestival.com).
The bothy, however, has been designed with a more challenging clientele in mind – artists. The creation of architectural designer Iain MacLeod and artist Bobby Niven, it is a response to grants they won through the Royal Scottish Academy's Residencies for Scotland scheme. Instead of using the money for individual residencies they decided to build a lasting legacy – a bothy that could be used by other artists as an ongoing residency space.
In time they hope The Bothy Project (thebothyproject.org) will develop into a network of small-scale residency spaces around Scotland and beyond. The main aim is to provide a way for artists to explore the history, ecology, landscape and people of a place, but with this first space, built at Inshriach in collaboration with Walter and the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, MacLeod and Niven are inadvertently trialling a pioneering idea: the crossover between tourism and art.
It's a simple but clever solution to a funding shortfall. To pay the bothy's costs and keep it running, the building will be rented out to paying guests on various dates each year; it will be available to member artists for the rest of the year.
This ties in with a growing trend towards recreational spaces that present a more earthy, Walden-esque existence. For every tourist attracted by a fly-and-flop sunshine resort, there's another seeking an escape from their frenzied, over-digitised life in a space where all they have to think about is feeding a fire, gazing at the stars and cooking simple, foraged foods.
The Bothy Project is part of the same widespread attack of cabin fever that has seen a surge of interest in hutting in Scotland and a rise in services such as the cult Cabin Porn website (freecabinporn.com), which streams images of fabulously photogenic huts, cabins and cottages to desk-bound wilderness-wannabees.
With only two nights at Inshriach and one full day, Helen and I wanted to get to grips with our immediate surroundings before the light disappeared.
"The whole place was designed around the windows – recycled sashes from Bobby's Glasgow flat – and a ladder found in a skip outside Glasgow School of Art that now leads up to the sleeping platform," said Walter. "Between its wooden frame and a coating of corrugated iron is a hefty layer of sheep's wool insulation."
There's also a reclaimed wooden floor, rainwater harvesting for washing (and washing up) and some kitchen essentials – a starter pack of eggs from Walter and Lucy's chickens, fruit, milk, tea and coffee, oats, candles, pots and pans, a corkscrew and a toasting rack. Once the stove is on it's surprisingly cosy (no need for the hot water bottles and thermals we'd packed) and a short walk away there's a compost loo with a view, strung with solar-powered fairy lights that we are glad of on a cloudy, moonless night, since the path to it isn't very well-trodden yet.
Begun last July and finished the day Helen and I arrived, in mid-March, the bothy was largely built with volunteer labour from Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. "We wanted to do something bespoke and interesting," said Walter. "If this looks relatively simple, that's deliberate – it has been designed not to impose too much of an aesthetic on the artists who come here.
"There's something about buildings with no power and made with natural materials that is just really good for the soul," he said as we finished our tea and fell into a fire-lulled lethargy. With woodsmoke curling away through the chimney and the last of the sunset retreating through the surrounding trees it became clear just how contemplative and introspective a space this might be. But if we thought we were in for a quiet night, Walter had other plans. We piled into a car and headed down to the Old Bridge Inn (oldbridgeinn.co.uk), outside Aviemore. There, we washed down perfectly cooked sea bream and spinach (£15) with bottles of Cairngorm Gold and peppery pinot noir, and settled in for the night as fiddles, guitars, drums and a double bass squeezed past us to an impromptu stage.
The next morning we woke to another surprise. Hanging on the door of the hut was a red and white checked napkin, tied up Dick Whittington-style around a pile of fresh croissants, butter and jam.
We sat eating our croissants to the sound of a woodpecker hammering in a nearby tree. Surrounded by Forestry Commission land and the Rothiemurchus Estate, the bothy has access to some of the best biking, kayaking and, in the winter, skiing in Scotland. We wanted to avoid another drive, though, so we set off on foot to Loch an Eilein, a small lake around three miles away with a ruined castle in its middle. It was once a stronghold of the fearsome Wolf of Badenoch (1343–1405) the third surviving son of King Robert II of Scotland.
We rewarded ourselves afterwards with tea and homemade cake at Inshriach Nursery's Potting Shed Tearoom (inshriachnursery.co.uk), enjoying slices of chocolate torte and fresh berry sponge respectively from vintage china plates as a feathery flying squad dipped and bobbed around the feeders strung up just outside the room's long back window.
Later that evening, we settled back in by the bothy's fire, warming soup on the stove and chatting over the spit and crack of smouldering logs. There was something we had to do before turning in for the night, though. Heating water on the stove, mixing it with rainwater and hooking it up in a special sack within a marginally modesty-preserving curve of the decking, we took it in turns to shower under the stars in the dark and the stillness, listening only to the sound of the river swirling below. This may be a back-to-nature experience but it comes with some luxuries that even Aviemore's fanciest hotels can't provide.
• The bothy, which sleeps two, costs from £95 a night through Canopy & Stars (01275 395447,canopyandstars.co.uk/the-bothy-project. East Coast Trains (0845 722 5333, eastcoast.co.uk) has single fares from London to Edinburgh from £16.50. Europcar (0871 384 1087, europcar.co.uk) car hire from Edinburgh Waverley Station costs from £23 a day. Or take a train from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Aviemore for £10.90 (0845 601 5929, scotrail.co.uk) and a taxi from there to Inshriach (£10)
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