A bothy is a stone hut in the hills that nobody owns in the way you own a house. The door is not locked. There is a fireplace or a stove, a sleeping platform, sometimes a table. That is the whole list.

People ask me what it is like before they book the winter trip. This is the plain version.

Arriving

You walk in. There is no road to any of the bothies we use, and the shortest approach is an hour and a half. In January the light goes at four, so we aim to be at the door by two.

On our trips the second guide has gone ahead with the wood and the food. You come round the last bend and there is a lit window and smoke. People go quiet at that point. I still do.

The evening

Boots off at the door. The room is warm near the stove and cold by the far wall, and you learn within ten minutes where to sit. Supper is soup, then something heavy, then tea. There is no signal, so nobody looks at a phone after the first hour.

The first night, people talk until ten. The second night they are asleep by half past eight, and they are happier for it.

We play cards. Someone always reads aloud from the bothy book, where walkers have left notes for fifty years.

The night

You sleep on a wooden platform on a thick mat, in a bag rated well below zero. It is dark in a way most people have forgotten. If you go outside at midnight, and you should, the stars are close and the cold catches in your nose.

In the morning the stove is lit again before you are up. Porridge, sweep the floor, carry out everything you carried in. Then the door is pulled shut for whoever comes next.