Last updated 25 July 2026.
Not every shelter in Scotland is ours to put on a map. Some are published by the people who own them. Some are not, and publishing those can get them locked, charged for, or demolished. This page sets out how we decide, so you can hold us to it.
The Mountain Bothies Association publishes its own bothy locations, so all MBA bothies are mapped. Non-MBA shelters are mapped only where the landowner, the estate, or an official body such as NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scotland or a National Park publishes the shelter themselves.
Where nothing suggests a shelter should not be listed, but no owner or official source supports publishing it either, we keep a reference page and remove the location. That means no map pin, no coordinates, no grid reference, no approach notes and no photograph. The page records what the building is; it does not tell you how to find it.
We remove a shelter when the owner has asked for no publicity, when access has been restricted or withdrawn, when it is private or club accommodation rather than an open shelter, or when we cannot verify that the record is accurate.
Howff launched with 132 shelters. After reviewing every non-MBA entry against the rules above, 9 were removed and 12 had their locations withheld:
Some of those were also plain errors on our part. Two we had listed as open when they are not, and one we could not confirm exists at the location we published.
If you are a landowner, factor, estate worker or maintainer and you want a building removed or its location withheld, tell us and we will do it. We will not ask you to justify it and we will not argue. Use the contact form.
The same goes for anyone who knows an owner's wishes first-hand. We would rather remove something on a good-faith report than leave it up and be wrong.
Removing a page from this site does not remove it from search engines immediately, and it does not remove anything already copied elsewhere. We submit removal requests where we can, but that process is not instant and is not fully in our control. This is the main reason we now check before publishing rather than after.