You have loads of options. Britain has substantial areas of wilderness, especially in Scotland.

The traditional choice would be a Bothy. These are simple shelters (usually traditional stone cottages) accessible to anyone who would like to use them at no charge. There are about 100 bothies across Scotland, Wales and northern England. Bothies have only the most basic of facilities (usually just four walls, a roof and a fireplace), you're expected to share with whoever arrives, and bothies are truly remote, usually several hours walk from the nearest paved road.

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

If you don't have the skills or experience to be able to navigate to a remote grid ref and survive completely independently (the fact that you're asking this question strongly suggests that you don't), then you'll probably want to look at a bunkhouse or hostel. Bunkhouses and camping barns vary, from a bothy with a bog up to well-appointed bunkhouses that are youth hostels in all but name. Hostels themselves very greatly, from rough-and-ready dosshouses for hardened climbers and mountaineers, through to slick and modern accommodation. Some of the more traditional YHA and SYHA properties are very remote indeed - Glen Affric SYHA has no mobile phone signal, mains electricity or water, and is inaccessible in the winter months due to snow.

>>2325

Oban, lad.

There is a lot of places in Scotland that are remote enough that you'll get that real sense of isolation, with a shop nearby. Also, sometimes, a hottub.

I'll chip in and say I had a great time staying in remote mountain hostels in Bulgaria... everything is very soviet but the scenery is breathtaking.If you're feeling more keen than I was you can take a ~6 hour hike to the Rila Monastery from the lakes of the same name. The only downside is you're probably a bit fucked if you or someone you're with doesn't speak at least a little of the language, but everything is unbelievably cheap there.

There must be options closer to home though, don't know if any national parks have these kinda cabins or if it goes against the whole protection aspect.

As someone who's had the misfortune to live extremely rurally (I don't mean Berkshire rural), it fucks me off when I see posts and people like this who think it's Gods gift to live like that, even only for a week. It's idealism at it's most unrealistic, see: Christopher McCandless.

>>2329

I grew up in a village that didn't even have a post office, so I can understand that it does come with frustrations, but it was the best time of my life. I miss it deeply, though I can only speak for myself. I think it's very much a symptom of city living to want to simplify your life.

That village now has a Co-op with a post office in it, so if I could move back I would. It's the natural state, it doesn't feel like isolation because you get to know everyone.

Cities are demonstrably toxic to the psyche. I live in a town of about 12,000 people now and we even have a Sainsbury's, being able to just go and buy booze instead of going to the pub is a real novelty. Anything bigger than this and I think I would feel isolated, though. Too many people.

>>2330

>Cities are demonstrably toxic to the psyche

Speak for yourself, lad.

Humans aren't made for living in cities and it does bad things to us and our attitudes towards others when we do. We need our space.

>>2332

Bollocks.

>>2331

I'm not speaking from experience, so I can't. The evidence is there if you look, this was just from a quick google the full article will be up somewhere.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/jun/22/city-living-afffects-brain

>>2333

Quality post m8.

>>2335
Quality post, m8.

>>2332
Humans aren't specifically "made" for anything. For some people city life is great and others it's isolating and horrible. Personally I enjoy living in the city but still appreciate the odd break in the sticks in much the same way as I would imagine people in the sticks sometimes enjoy a trip into the city.

You seem to assume humans are one homogenous blob who will all react to certain environmental factors in the same way. I like the buzz and madness of a big city and if I spend more than a week or so in the countryside I just get bored.
I think you've just made a lazy generalisation based on your own limited experience really. Maybe for you living in a city is fucking hell but for a lot of people it's a great experience. To assume what's true for yourself is applicable to everyone is extremely self centered and narrow minded.

Sage for banging on.

>>2335

PotY.

>>2334

>The part of the brain that senses danger becomes overactive in city-dwellers when they are under stress
>when they are under stress

That article is on par with the Daily Mail's science coverage, sorry mate.

Look, to expand, you are making a sweeping generalization about humanity. Which is never a smart move. You may not like cities. Fine. I do.

Anyway, the real science points to these things being caused by poverty and poor urban design - you won't get the same reults in say, Oslo, or Barcelona.

Just accept that some of us love it, some of us don't.

>>2337
Agrarianism is proven to have had some highly negative effects on humans including stunting of growth.

>>2339
If people want to go down that route then yeah I guess we'd better abandon all forms of technology, agriculture, medicine and modern culture and just go back to hunting and gathering.

>>2338

You are completely missing the point, why are you being so defensive?

It says in the article that people have different preferences, not everyone is adversely affected but a large enough percentage appear to be to cause serious issues. However, you made a completely idiotic statement about people having a desire to live simply and this study goes some way towards explaining why that urge exists.

I don't see what the Daily Mail has got to do with a study carried out by a university in Germany.

Try and tone down the cuntery, do us all a favour.

>>2340
There's a lot of stuff which is a legacy of agrarianism which I would be very pleased to abandon.

>>2341

Is that you again lad? Fuck's sake, the last two nights have really been enough. Learn to reply to seperate posts, and learn to string a coherent reponse together. You sound like Schizolad on a good day. Step away from the keyboard and go and have a fucking walk.

And you accuse me of cuntery? Fuck off.

>>2343

Nice one mate, flawless smokescreen.

>>2344
You are such a cunt. No wonder you want to get away from people. You have no social skills, you silly twat. Fuck off to Antarctica.

>>2344


You've managed to fuck up a promising thread on /eco/. For shame, lad, for shame.

I'm going for a smoke. Think carefully about what you have done, then delete your posts. Take your pills, go for a walk, and at least give use a couple of days rest before posting again. It is getting highly tedious.

>>2343

Here we go... If you can't follow the conversation it's hardly my problem now, is it?

Im really confused right now.

Why are you all angry? There doesn't appear to be anything adversarial about anything posted, outside the angry shouting about something I'm clearly missing.

>>2349
MSci-in-Agrarianism-lad, thinks we should all go back to being hunter-gatherers, because cities are bad for humans. It isn't natural you see. We should only do what is considered natural.

>>2349
I blame /sfw/. On one hand it's very useful for finding new threads which might otherwise be neglected but it also attracts the crowds who otherwise don't really have an interest in the board.

>>2347

Feel free to retract that post at anytime, lad. I haven't attempted to start anything, I'm being raged at for pointing out city life can be stressful for some people causing them to seek out isolation because a lad said he thought it was strange and didn't get it.

My posts are perfectly easy to follow, I posted this >>2330 first and replied to the poster who replied to me until >>2341.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on here but I most certainly didn't start it, mods can confirm.

Hello, hello, what's all this shouting?

We'll have no trouble here.

>>2353

Audible mirth.

>>2352 here

Ok, I've had a look. Do you think I'm this >>2332 or this >>2339 guy?

Bloody hell, my other posts are nothing like those! The level of antagonism on .gs is getting worse, I swear. The guy I replied to to begin with makes a comment about being fucked off and I try to add balance and get called a cunt. Fair enough, I mentioned toning down the cuntery but that is because I thought I was talking to >>2329 and thought they were dismissing solid science rather than admit they were over-reacting slightly. That's so counter-intuitive it's like a dream, why would someone willfully disrupt the mood like that?

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>2355

So, back to OPs request.

Scandinavia is definitely worth it - especially with their camping laws. Go in late Spring or late Summer though, unless you like 24-hour daylight.

We don't really have unspoilt landscape in the UK. Pretty much everything has been raised over the centuries.

Poland has some good stuff, Zacopane is definitely worth checking out - and the other side of the Slovak (?) border is real wilderness. Same with Poland/Belarus - real primordial forest.

The Black Forest in Krautland, maybe?

>>2359
>Pretty much everything has been raised over the centuries.

The same is true across Europe, even in the most rural of places. You cannot escape the touch of the human hand. Vast swathes of the Black Forest are planned forests. A Kraut on /int/ was saying that the vast majority of German forest is planned now.

>>2359

One is inspired to inquire about a good Black Forest Chateau.

Oh, dohoho

>>2360

Which raises the interesting question, what places are still unbound? The Yukon? Antarctica? Funny to think about, really.

>>2362
Sahara.

>>2362
There's quite large areas in North America, but they are designated as National Parks and you're not allowed to camp in them.

>>2364

Are they completely off limits to everyone but officials?

>>2362
space.

>>2364

You're very much allowed to camp in them. What the fuck are you on about?

>>2362
Inner space.

>>2364
The level of actual wilderness in America is fairly miniscule. There's only, if I remember rightly, a handful of areas in the country more than 10 miles from a road. The place where manchild mccandless went in that dross film that everyone has a routemaster for is pretty standard - within half a day's walk from a major road and with cabins and wreckage scattered liberally around, intercrossed with service roads and ORV tracks. There is no real wilderness left in the first world, at least not of any appreciable size.

>>2369
What about Australia?

>>2369
>There is no real wilderness left in the first world, at least not of any appreciable size.
Bollocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uninhabited_regions

>>2371
Uninhabited is not the same thing.

>>2372
It kind of is though. Inhabitation is a good sign that there's no wilderness there. If you fancy some wilderness, Antarctica's a good start. Very little human interference away from the research stations. Having not been touched by man for decades, the Korean DMZ is pretty wild apart from three small spots.

>>2373
That's not what wilderness is, though. Antarctica is a good example, but I don't think you can describe it as 1st world. A wilderness area is one which hasn't been worked over by people. No-where in the UK meets that criteria, clearly, since we've had thousands of years of humans modifying the landscape, to the point where it must bear absolutely no resemblance to what was here before, anywhere in the country. The Americans sort of had the right idea with designated "protected" wilderness areas, but the execution is somewhat flawed because they're run as tourist attractions and allow selective logging, hunting and so on and are "managed" in most cases. Lots of Alaska and Canada is uninhabited, permanently at least, but there is a lot of logging, mining, prospecting, military use, oil exploration and so on. There's only one river, for example, in the entirety of North America which hasn't been done over, probably the last undisturbed salmon habitat, and they're just about to allow an enormous clear cut copper mine to built on it, and that's in a "protected" area. That's the level we're at now, unfortunately. What OP seems to want is a Dick Proenneke style cabin miles from anyone or anything, but accessible, which is no longer really possible. He could quite easily go and rent a cottage in the highlands and islands and not see or hear anyone for days, but he'd still be seeing a landscape completely destroyed by deforestation, monocropping, erosion and overgrazing by an imported Mesopotamian ruminant.

>>2374
>What OP seems to want is a Dick Proenneke style cabin miles from anyone or anything, but accessible, which is
basically a contradiction in terms.

>>2326

Excellent post mate. I would love to buy a plot of land down the line and have a remote cabin to get away to. There don't seem to be many trees around these Bothies. Is there a reason for that?

I could think of nothing nicer than getting away to one of these places with a few bottles of whisky and a big bag of weed for a week. No internet, no people, just pure unadulterated bliss.

>>2381

>There don't seem to be many trees around these Bothies. Is there a reason for that?

Most bothies are above the treeline. Trees just aren't hardy enough to withstand the high winds in exposed high-altitude locations. You can see that there are a few trees right next to Glen Affric hostel, which have survived because they're sheltered from the wind by the building itself.

The attached photo isn't brilliant, but it shows the general point - the sheltered valley is thickly wooded, but the trees become increasingly sparse and then disappear completely as the land becomes more exposed. On the highest peaks, not even the grass and scrub can survive. If you were to climb up in person, you'd see that at the edge of the tree line the trees become increasingly stunted and knarled due to wind damage, often leaning at an angle away from the prevailing wind.

>>2381
The land around most bothies isn't 'wilderness', it's managed by the estate for farming or hunting. Which means that sheep and deer have eaten the young small trees that would naturally grow there. Nearby forest areas are likely to be monoculture plantations of non-native Sitkas, planted and grown for logging and tax-dodging reasons.

>>2374
> He could quite easily go and rent a cottage in the highlands and islands and not see or hear anyone for days, but he'd still be seeing a landscape completely destroyed by deforestation, monocropping, erosion and overgrazing by an imported Mesopotamian ruminant.

Going to stick my neck out here and suggest that some of the Shetland islands probably fit closest to this description while still (technically) in the UK. The land isn't much good for farming, there were never any trees there to begin with and cows tend to get blown over. Obviously it's been touched by human hands but I can't imagine that, apart from natural erosion, some of the islands have changed that much at all from their natural state. I could be romanticizing to some extent though.

>>2384
You are romaticising. Most of western Scotland is more untouched than Shetland, though they're both gorgeous, I suggest all Brits visit the Highlands at least once to find out what our island has to offer us, it's a wonderful place.

>>2385

Good to know. I've been as far north in the Shetlands as Unst and thought it to be about as wild as one could get in the UK. I've never been to the West of Scotland though, so I'm obviously missing out there.

>>2385

>our island

Brace yourselves, lads.

>>2386
It's wonderful, personally I find Scottish nationalists some of the most detestable people but it's a brilliant place, absolutely gorgeous!

>>2387
Fuck off.

>>2388

The Scottish girls that I've known have been witty, intelligent and seriously knew how to drink. But not in a cliched Scottish drinking way.

>>2388

Thanks for bringing politics into it you loathsome, tedious cunt. Just fuck off and stay away with that attitude of yours. /pol/ is leaking trolls. Bad enough when they bang their hate drums there.

>>2391

Given that he was (presumably) the main person giving this thread quality content, such a vapid, vacuous, hate-filled reply was hardly necessary. You perfumed ponce.