I’m hiring a cottage. Ben Winston leaves the church of ripstop for a more civilised approach to the hills.

I love camping. Always have done. Love the freedom to go sleep where I chose; love the wild sense of freedom; love, even, the naïve weather optimism that lies at the heart of every UK camping holiday. But there comes a time, particularly when the chill of winter hasn’t quite yet left the highlands, when you begin to think about another way of doing things.

It might be maturity and the first creak of aging bones that does it, or it might just be that after decades of mildew and damp that you find yourself ready for a change. Still, one way or another you come to realise there must be Another Way. And indeed there is: thanks to thousands of kind and accommodating homeowners across the uplands of the UK, you can hire a cottage, a castle, or even a lighthouse for a week away.

The benefits are persuasive. Picture two scenarios – one, it’s been a day of force nine and you’ve just had a very wet but exhilarating time being blown around the tops. You’re soaked to the skin, exhausted, but happy. You return to your campsite and unzip your tent…

Now replay the above - appalling weather, great day, wet through and the rest of it, but imagine that instead of the flapping banshee of wet fabric, you return to a solid, dry, wooden beamed cottage. Swap the ten square feet of dull green space for a living room with a roaring fire. Forget gassing yourself for the sake of instant pasta slops, and think instead of a three-course meal, a spacious kitchen, a glass of red and an Aga pumping out delicious heat. Now – and this is the real clincher – imagine pouring yourself… wait for it… a deep, hot, steaming bath…

Such was the scenario in Torridon when, with a bunch of friends new to walking, we hired a cottage not far from Gairloch in the far northern Highlands. It was cheap and warm and comfortable, had a mountainous view on the doorstep and was decorated to illustrate how far we have come since the 1950s, but it’s very best aspect was that it left us within striking distance of one of the UK’s most exciting mountain areas.

Now Torridon, for those who don’t already know about it, is a brilliant piece of mountain making. Formed from some of the oldest rocks on the planet – the aptly named Torridonian sandstone – it’s a weird landscape of gigantic sandstone mountains blistering up from the bog which somehow manages to look very prehistoric. It has an otherworldly air that’s difficult to pin down, but it’s probably a mixture of towering cliffs, the distinctiveness of each mountain and Torridon’s remoteness from the rest of the country. It feels tangibly lonely. There are long walks to do and mountains to climb where you can be pretty sure you won’t see anyone else all day.

And this is why I took my friends there. A bunch of relative newcomers to the hills, I needed to have them converted to the joys of British mountains by the end of the week and figured that if I was going to start waving the bible of the outdoors at them and wanted converts, there was no point starting in the Malverns. This was to be an introduction to Scotland, big time. They would get to see what hill walking was all about, learn to love the hoolie, the driving rain and the unmistakable satisfaction of the well-earned pint. Only it didn’t work out like that. The problem was that each morning we would wake to find the sun barrelling over the horizon and filling the living room with a delicious golden light. I had to explain that this was not Scotland at all, but some rare, mythical place that exists in the collective sunshine-dreams of outdoor folk. Rarely, I told them as the week progressed, do you walk in Scotland for four consecutive days without rain. But they didn’t believe me. They thought hill walking was all about beautiful days and amazing views, that all you had to do to reap the benefits of Torridon was climb the mountains. Then one day on Liathach we met others who could validate the freakish weather: “I’ve been out almost every weekend since the middle of summer and this is only the second time I’ve had a view”, one Glaswegian told us. “Really?” questioned a disbelieving Natalie. “You’ve been really unlucky!”

Having a cottage no doubt helped elevate the experience to the realm of sublime, but at the end of the day it was Torridon that deserves the credit. It’s such a magical place, and so far from the rest of the country, that you need a week to do the place justice. We had started slowly, exploring the little known Corbetts of north Torridon as a perfect warm up – accessible mountains with straightforward walking and the best views of Beinn Alligin, Lithach and Beinn Eighe it’s possible to get. But then we turned our attentions south, with unbelievable days out on Liathach and Beinn Alligin. You may have to be up for a bit of scrambling with these two, but if you can manage the heights then there are few better days out to be had in the British Isles.

What really sticks in the mind, though, is that following a mammoth day on the hills we had a roaring fire to return to. And that on days where we really were too tired to get out and go walking, there was a sofa to lie back on and read, plus a constant supply of tea from the ceaselessly boiling kettle on the Aga. Sleeping in beds was a wonderful novelty for a walking trip away, and having dry boots and clothes nothing short of a revelation. That’s not to say that I’ll never go camping again – there is still nothing to beat waking up on a peak in fine weather – but I’m converted to the occasional comfort. Especially if it’s combined with good friends and, of course, more time in Torridon.

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