In an eye-opening documentary, a hermit has made his 40 year journey alone living in a wooded cabin.
Ken Smith (74) has survived almost 40 decades living in the Scottish Highlands without running water or electricity. Instead, Ken relies on a log fireplace to keep him warm.
A log cabin built by the pensioner on Loch Treig’s banks, Lochaber. This is where his primary source of food is from fishing.
Derbyshire-born Ken foraged for berries, grows his own vegetables. Ken still cuts his own wood and washes his clothes outside in an old bath.
However, after suffering a stroke he is now experiencing blurred vision, memory loss and has to seek out help.
“It’s nice living,” Ken states in the BBC Scotland program. He says, “Everybody wants to do that, but no one ever does.”
Reports the BBC, Lizzie McKenzie, a filmmaker, has been filming Ken over the last two years for her documentary The Hermit of Treig.
The log cabin, built by him, can be found at the Rannoch Moor edge, about a 2-hour drive from the closest road.
Ken Smith hunts for berries along the shores of Loch Treig, in the Scottish Highlands. He has been living in a cabin in this area for nearly 40 years.
The documentary The Hermit of Treig (shown here eating a strawberry) will show how Ken turned his back upon modern civilisation after tragic events in his own life.
A trailer shows Ken from Derbyshire foraging for peanuts in a trailer
Ken is a berry collector, with some of them in storage to prevent birds from reaching them. He lives mostly off fish caught in the Loch.
Ken, seen foraging in the woods, says no to returning to civilisation.
Ken Smith (pictured), who is 74 years old, survived almost forty decades living in the Scottish Highlands without electricity, running water, or gas. He relied on his log fire for warmth.
He says, “It is known as the lonely Loch.” “There is no road, but people used to live there before the dam was built.”
He looks down from the hillside at the Loch and adds, “All their ruin are down there.” It’s now one, and it’s only me.
This documentary explores how Ken turned his back against modern civilisation after he suffered traumatic experiences in his life.
Although he started fire station building at age 15, he suffered a severe brain injury when a gang attacked him after a night of drinking.
“They told me I wouldn’t recover.” They told me I’d never be able to speak again,” he said.
“They told me I wouldn’t walk again, but they were wrong.
“That was when I realized that I could not live by anyone else’s rules.
After the attack, Ken began to travel and explored the possibility of living in nature.
He was visiting Yukon Territory between Canada and Alaska and decided to travel around 22,000 miles to get home.
It was also during that epic trip that his parents passed away, something he didn’t realize until he arrived back.
He said, ‘It didn’t hit me for a long time.’ “I felt nothing.”
Ken eventually walked across Britain, when he felt helpless after the deaths of his parents.
‘I cried all the way while walking,’ Ken tells the documentary.
I thought, “Where is Britain’s most isolated spot?”
“I followed each bay, every Ben and wherever there was no house being built.
There are hundreds and thousands of miles of nothingness. “I looked out over the Loch and saw this forest.
Ken said that it was there that Ken stopped crying.
Since then, he has lived there and mainly relied on the fish from the Loch.
He said, “Learning how to fish is the best way to make your own life.”
But things got more complicated when Ken suffered a stroke on February 2019
While out on the frozen snow, he was able to transmit an alert using a GPS locator beacon which he had received just days prior.
A SOS was activated, and the message was forwarded to Houston’s response centre, Texas. This in turn alerted the UK coastguard.
Ken was taken by helicopter to Fort William Hospital, where he spent the next seven weeks recovering.
He refused to listen to doctors’ pleas for him to live in a home with carer-staff, and instead chose to stay put at his cabin.
The documentary will explore how traumatic events in Ken’s life led him to turn his back on modern civilisation (Pictured: Ken in the documentary The Hermit of Treig, airing on BBC Scotland tonight)
The pensioner lives in an old log cabin he constructed himself, on the banks of Loch Treig. There, fishing is his main source of nutrition.
Ken picks berries from his garden and plants his vegetables. He still chops his firewood, washes his clothes outside in an old bathtub (Pictured : Loch Treig).
Ken, (pictured), has suffered a stroke that left him with blurred vision. He also suffers from memory loss. This is threatening his ability to live normally.
However, his stroke-related double vision and memory impairment means that he must accept assistance from the head stalker at the estate in which his cabin is located.
Ken sends food packages to his stalker every two weeks, paying him money from the pension.
Ken says, “People these days were very kind to my,”
Ken fell onto a stack of logs a year later. He was flown to hospital again, but he insists that his cabin will remain the same.
Ken asserts that “we weren’t made on this earth for ever.”
“I’ll be here till my last days, certainly.”
“I have been through many different incidents, but seem to have survived all of them.
“It’s inevitable for me to get sick once more.” It will be the same for me as it is for everyone else.
“But, I hope I can get to 102.”
BBC Scotland will broadcast The Hermit Of Treig at 10pm (November 9) on BBC Scotland. It will also be on BBC iPlayer.