I was young. I suppose that’s no excuse but I am going to make it anyway. Mainly because I am writing this alone and there is no-one hear to stop me. Have that world, self-indulgence all the way.

Anyway, so I was young, 7 years old to be exact, and I wanted to go with my dad and his friends walking in the Peak District, Derbyshire. They were to climb Mam Tor, near Castleton, and walk along the ridge, a distance of around 12 miles. It was winter, about -5, snowing, and foggy. The conditions were not ideal, basically. But, being the stubborn young child I was, I went any way.

According to my dad, the crying started about two minutes from the car. This was joined on the peak of the hill by hysteria about hypothermia (I think I had heard the name on some irresponsible children’s show – the scaremongering bastards). The crying continued for the duration until the whole group gave up and descended from the ridge to a random village pub. I was about as popular as George Bush in an Osama Bin Laden costume.

So, when at the humble age of 18 I was at a loose end and the owner of a bank account with more minuses than an arctic weather report, I decided to avenge the ghosts of my disastrous Mam Tor past. As I drove towards it in winter 2002, I swear I heard these ghosts laughing, laughing as if God himself had just taken a kick in the mid-rift.

The reason, perhaps, was that far from being a picture of youthful fitness, I was a lazy and adolescent 18 year old who had discovered the joys of lager. This meant I was to fitness what Jonathan Ross is to understatement.

But I set-out regardless, rucksack and waterproofs adorned, and my younger brother in tow, who was looking like a gazelle beside the elephant I had clearly become. And we began scaling the mountain without much hassle. Until the rain started.

It was rain that you only see in films. Rain that feels like someone’s pouring buckets of water over your head. And then laughing at you. The going, understandably, became tough, and we were slipping around dangerously. My calfs started to burn and my breathing was erratic. The top became ever more elusive. I was a physical mess.

We made it, though, and the clouds parted briefly, sending swords of light swiping towards the Derbyshire countryside, illuminating villages and lakes and woodland. It is moments like that when you realise how beautiful and hobbit-like England is. How it has as much to offer as any “must-see” stop on the gap year tour, if in a smaller, less threatening way. For England is life condensed in terms of its landscape, quaint but no less valuable than anywhere else.

Predictably, the rain break lasted about as long as my positivity and we were soon trudging along the ridge, hoods over faces and feet four inches in mud.

I wouldn’t say I was negative, I like to call it realism. My brother, he called it being a miserable bastard. What ever you call it, it was one of the main reasons we took the first route off the mountain and down to a village pub. It was all strangely familiar. I didn’t cry this time, which was comforting, but the end result was the same, ten years on.

I looked out of the pub window at the rain altered vision of the mountain. Its ragged edges seemed to smile and I swear I heard a cackle on the wind.

I was having none of it. With a swift flick of the finger out the window, I drained my pint and started planning my next assault on my nemesis. Next time, I was coming in summer.