One of the UK’s last remaining hermits has vowed to die as a recluse after rejecting doctors’ orders to return to “civilisation”.
Ken Smith, 74, has lived without electricity or running water for almost four decades in a wooden cabin by Loch Treig in the Scottish Highlands, a two mile walk from the nearest road.
He allowed a filmmaker, Lizzie McKenzie, to film him over two years, and told her that he would stay in the wilderness “until my final days come”.
He has rejected doctors' offers to help move him into a flat in Fort William so that he could be looked after by carers.
He has suffered a series of health scares over recent years, including a stroke, which have twice seen him taken to hospital by helicopter. However, he remains determined to stay in his cabin, which he built himself.
"It's a nice life," Mr Smith said. "I think if you love the land, it loves you back, with all the things it produces for you.”
He said that knowing how to fish was the secret to an “independent life”, which he sought after an incident in 1974 when he was seriously injured after being beaten up on a night out. He also grows vegetables and forages for berries.
He was left with a brain hemorrhage following the attack and was told that he would never walk, speak or write again.
After he defied the prognosis and recovered, he decided to “would never live on anyone's terms but my own," he said.
He walked thousands of miles through remote parts of Canada, and then the length of Britain, in search of the “most isolated place” in the country. He settled on Rannoch in the Scottish Highlands, beside what is known as "the lonely loch".
After experimenting with a design with small sticks, he built a full-size cabin in the 1980s, where he has lived ever since.
Ms McKenzie’s documentary, The Hermit of Treig, is broadcast on BBC Scotland on Tuesday night and is available on the iPlayer.
It showed him in consultation with a doctor, who told him he would technically be classed as homeless and qualify for a council house. But Mr Smith insisted on returning to isolation.
'I'll stop here until my final days come'
"Everybody wishes they could do it but nobody ever does," Mr Smith, who is originally from Derbyshire, said of his unconventional lifestyle.
His cabin has a log fire but no electricity, gas, running water or mobile phone signal. When he suffered a stroke, days after filming finished in 2019, he was rescued after calling for help using a GPS locator beacon which he had recently been given. He was airlifted to hospital again last year after a pile of logs fell on him.
He is now helped by the head stalker of the estate, who brings him food every few weeks.
Despite his recent health scares, he is hoping to live until he is 102. "We weren't put on earth forever," he said. "I'll stop here until my final days come, definitely.
"I have had lots of incidents but I seem to have survived them all. Something will happen to me that will take me away one day as it does for everybody else.”
Ms McKenzie heard about Mr Smith while she ran a remote restaurant, and was told about him by local deer stalkers.
They became friends nine years ago after she sought him out and asked him to teach her to fish. She later became a filmmaker and persuaded him to take part in a documentary.
