Hutting

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locum76

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Oct 9, 2005
2,772
9
47
Kirkliston
Hi folks.

I was emailed this info from another forum (Bhodi project). It looks very interesting and could be a viable way to get folk into the woods from marginalised urban areas without the associated problems.

http://www.thousandhuts.org/

What do you think?

Rob
 
Yes, Im sure we really do want chavs in the woods

yes adds to the quarry list ;)
931501-Chavs(Medium).jpg
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
They aren't chavs. They're folks who live in housing schemes, towers and tenements who build themselves a little bit of peace and quiet in a woodland in their own country.

But then, I'm Scots, we see the wider world as being inclusive, not for the exclusive use of a few.

No idea whether the parliament will go for it or not Rob. I know that the issues at Carbeth are a great deal more complex than either side would admit, and it's not sorted out yet. I don't think that's a good example to use tbh.
If it does go ahead I think it needs a new model, a new framework and social structure, not an embittered and vitriolically divisive one.

cheers,
M
 

tiger stacker

Native
Dec 30, 2009
1,178
40
Glasgow
Cheers for the link, huts were all over Scotland from the ones north of Ballantrae to outside Carnoustie. Carbeth led to a report commission by the then new Scottish Parliament. As a result Stirlingshire council realigned the rates to a small business scale, this pleased my father as he pays a much lower monthly payment.

As good as camping is to sneak inside your family But n Ben every weekend is priceless. Replacing stoves is expensive however they have always been for sale, gas is warm but coal wood multifuel stove is better. Carbeth has a eclectic mixture of designs with various folk living there on n off. My father and I walked around Carbeth looking at the huts with their well kept gardens, although it is a community in its own right i would not like it as it too close to Glasgow. Our hut was built post war, near to is a hut made out of two troop tranporter boxes(think of Montys command caravan).
As a bairn, i remember the local shop van selling papers milk eggs etc etc, the shops gone now the nearest village shop is run by the villergers themselves. Sunrise + Sunset are great, midges are a pain cleggs are even worse yet to hear the sheer silence with the stream nearby is worth the effort in maintaining the hut for years to come.

To encourage folk to live like this, you need to appreciate the time for upkeep sourcing materials and access. A hourly bus service is 4 miles away or the 3 times a day just over a mile. Without a vehicle older folk would struggle to walk the distance. A nice wee lady came all the way north from folkstone to revisit her hut, her son lives there when not working at Collum Bridge. He has the best of the Cairngorms and his hut to enjoy.
 

ged

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jul 16, 2009
4,976
13
In the woods if possible.
The local chavs didn't just do drugs in my hut, but I suppose it started with the drugs. And smashing things up.

For a few months I just cleaned up, repaired things, and put them generally back in order.

Then it seemed like they thought I was setting some sort of a challenge. So they stole or destroyed all my cooking equipment, cutlery, stores, utensils and tools, or in the case of my reading materials and clothes, used them for toilet paper or just spread them all around the woods.

Finally they set light to the hut and burned it to the ground.

I've offered a reward of one thousand pounds per ear.
 

redandshane

Native
Oct 20, 2007
1,581
0
Batheaston
I think Toddy and I speak from personal experience and cultural awareness
Interesting stuff though
I can remember the "huts"at Sandyhills from the sixties and seventies on the Solway coast where I was born; a holiday retreat for the Glasgow working class
All pulled down and redeveloped into lodges/cabins priced and specced for the middle classes
Scotland is different to England a lot of people are crammed in the central belt/urban connurbation and there is plenty of space outwith that area which could be used
I also unfortunately find the continued reference to working class youth as Chavs rather lame,unnecessary and a bit offensive
If you think about it before saying it most of you will as well. Julie Burchill wrote a great article on it some years ago http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article515509.ece
 

T1Viper

Nomad
Sep 24, 2010
406
0
Ayrshire
Yes, Im sure we really do want chavs in the woods

Just because people come from "marginalised urban areas" does not make them chav's, that's not a fair point you've made.


If it was setup in such a way that there was one person or group of people, that live close to the hut who can check on how its being used and more importantly make sure its not abused. It's definitely an interesting idea thanks for the link locum.
 

ged

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jul 16, 2009
4,976
13
In the woods if possible.
I also unfortunately find the continued reference to working class youth as Chavs rather lame,unnecessary and a bit offensive
If you think about it...

And "working class"? Hmmm.

If I use the term 'chavs' it's only because I don't want to call them 'vermin' in public.

Either way, the offer stands.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I sometimes wonder if Scotland and England actually exist on the same planet :rolleyes:

Scotland is just about, it not 'the', singularly most urbanised nation in Western Europe. Over 80% of the population live, and work, in the central belt.
That central belt doesn't limit us however; it's normal for us to wander the rest of the country, it's actively encouraged.

The hutters were just ordinary folks with a footstep place to lay their heads in good, clean air. A place where they and their families could chill out.

I sincerely doubt that your 'chavs' were, or are ever likely to be, hutters.

Toddy
 

Retired Member southey

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jun 4, 2006
11,098
13
your house!
I love the idea of it, I would love to have a small patch i could put a tiny cabin on, just enough to lay down, make a brew or read a book if it was blowing out side, i think it would be such an amazing place to have , to be able to pass it down to, it would need to have no monetary value, just be a place to base my self in an area i would like to walk.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,776
1,510
51
Wiltshire
Im so sorry, I do not have a sign with a four letter word on my front door.

Nor Am I a state paid tenant in a rough area, with a Plasma screen and a huge DVD collection of my very own.

I should be more tolerant of those who do.

And yes, I think huts are a great idea, provided they dont turn into hovels; This goes for any kind of building.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Tengu, I don't know where you get the idea that those in council housing are loaded, 'cos they aren't. They're just folk who choose to rent rather than buy.
Tbh it suits a great many people. The borough is a good landlord. If the central heating breaks down, they come and fix it for people, if the roof leaks the borough fixes it.....but folks pay rent to the borough for that privilege, it's not a freebie.

It's your choice to be solely responsible for the maintainance of the house you live in.

Before anyone else starts, yes I do realise that I live in a good area and that the local councils do pay heed to their housing stock. That does not detract from the reality of the situation for council tenants.

Toddy
 
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tiger stacker

Native
Dec 30, 2009
1,178
40
Glasgow
I love the idea of it, I would love to have a small patch i could put a tiny cabin on, just enough to lay down, make a brew or read a book if it was blowing out side, i think it would be such an amazing place to have , to be able to pass it down to, it would need to have no monetary value, just be a place to base my self in an area i would like to walk.

The sentiments of the folk who built their own huts, upkeep is a issue though.
I have seen beautifal huts fall into disrepair to be dismantled by swan vistas, in the early seventies when he was still wearing his banana feet mr B Connolly owned a tin hut, the two nuns shared one with a brick chimmney thats all that is left of it.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,776
1,510
51
Wiltshire
No, I dont think that Council house tenants are loaded; Its just some have entertainment equitment that I could only dream about.

And yes, they are good landlords; Our local council has about 30 thousand on the waiting list...

...most of whom stand little to none chance of actually `getting` a tenancy...
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Not being nasty, but it's not just council tenants who have that kind of entertainment equipment, so why target them ? :dunno:
Because they rent instead of buy ? It's a choice, nothing else.

Shouldn't discuss politics; but if no one complains, nothing changes. Time your locals petitioned the council if there are 30,000 folks on a waiting list. The council is supposed to work for you.

cheers,
M
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,776
1,510
51
Wiltshire
I did suggest using my axe on the no hopers, to thin the list down a little, but the Civic offices declined.

I think they were worried about their soft furnishings
 

pango

Nomad
Feb 10, 2009
380
6
69
Fife
There are some ideas being floated here that I find rather skewed.

My father was the Housing Convener in my home-town in the 1950's and worked incessantly to deliver the ideal that Britain should be "A land fit for heroes"; ie, those who fought against Fascism from Spain to Burma, those who worked to make that a possibility and the wives and children of those hundreds of thousands who lost their lives in doing so. He saw no division between Scot, English, Welsh or Irish, as all deserved a life free from Disease, Squalor, Ignorance, Idleness and Want! More importantly, Britain was rife with the potential for disillusionment, with a male population which, some at a startlingly young age, had both seen and perpetrated the horrors of war and whose greatest experience in life was already behind them. What were the authorities going to do if they kicked off... send out the army?

The economics regarding housing was on the seemingly contradictory basis of both Keynesianism and the sound Market Capitalism of Henry Ford's "Economies of Scale", and had those measures not been sabotaged by the divisive and destructive political agendas of consecutive Westminster Governments, the notion of "subsidised housing" would never have entered the frame.

I can remember only 2 or 3 children in that town whose parents owned their own houses. The headmaster of my primary school lived in a council house, as did most of the local Police -the others lived in Police housing-, all of the local Fire Brigade and ambulance crews, and the tenants of every house in our street were either miners, steel, railway or mill workers. I remember the pride of the community when a lad from up the road graduated in medicine, and guess what... when he got married he moved into a council house. And this was no anomaly, as the greater majority of Britain's population lived in council houses.

It wasn't until the 1970's and the building of high rise blocks that the quality of housing fell -an architect was given an accolade for a building which had to be evacuated and demolished 6 years after construction, as it began to sink- and the back-room policy of the three offer rule placed new tenants and those most desperate into the worst housing stock, creating what were no better than ghettos which stigmatised all who had to live there, and once they were in they couldn't get out!

To quote Toddy, "I sometimes wonder if Scotland and England exist on the same planet". It's not that England never experienced a (lesser) equivalent of The Highland Clearances, the difference is that the Scots remember it and are still outraged at the atrocity. The road between Inverness and Tongue, known as the Destitution Road, is said to have had a constant southward flow of refugees for almost 50 years. We also remember The Seven Men of Knoydart, some of whom were jailed for planting potatoes on The Laird's land, in the mistaken belief that fighting their way past Tobruk and Benghazi on a number of occasions (The Benghazi Steeplechase) before cutting a swathe from El Alamein to Berlin gave them the right!

It's a fallacy that the years of The Great Depression created The Weekenders, folk who grabbed the chance to leave the cities for the countryside at every opportunity. What the years of depression of the 1930's created was a generation of unemployed men who left home in order to remove a mouth to feed in the household and almost accidentally gave birth to the great contribution made to mountaineering by the Scottish Working Class, culminating in the club which has probably made the biggest impact on mountaineering history, The Creag Dhu! Forget the Scottish Mountaineering Club which comprised of the upper crust and the landed gentry, these lads came from the pits and the shipyards and were only accepted by the SMC when they could no longer be ignored. In contrast to the SMC, the Creag Dhu went on their merits and probably couldn't give a toss what the SMC thought of them. There was also the issue that the SMC had reservations as to whether or not the Lower Classes should even be allowed into the countryside, while the so called Lower Classes assumed it to be their right!
Well, time has proved the latter to be the case.

There are issues with the uneducated and disrespectful but that is not an insurmountable problem and the resolution will hopefully not be left for bureaucrats and politicians to solve.

If you're happy enough with medieval English feudal laws and wish to maintain the status quo then that's your choice and yes, we are on different planets. But that makes open access to the countryside a specifically Scottish issue and your contribution isn't required. Let's call it a West Lothian Question turned on its head! :lmao:

Cheers,

Pango.
 
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