There are a few key facts to consider before going on a walking holiday. Who you're going with. How well you get on. How well you'll get on when you've just reached the top of a 3,000m pass and realise that one of you has left the map at the bottom of it. Whether you have the kind of relationship that is likely to thrive and prosper on sharing a claustrophobic space with poor washing facilities and not one heavily snoring German but 30. That kind of thing.
Because it's not everybody's cup of tea. Words such as 'challenging' and 'blisters' get flung around a lot, and not always in a good way.
Rain is less rain-like when you're standing on the side of a mountain, more bucket-of-water-being-tipped-over-you-while-being-simultaneously whipped-across-the face-with-a-wet-flannel-like. But as I said to my friend Louise, as we found ourselves trapped on the side of a mountain in the Dolomites in the middle of an electrical storm pondering the story I'd just told her of the friend of a friend who died after she conducted a lightning strike through the under-wire in her bra - think how warm and cosy it'll be when we get to the refuge!
For these are the compensations of a walking holiday, although, strictly speaking, they're less compensations, more mind games - think how nice it'll be to stop! Think what a good view there'll be at the top! Think how much easier walking down will be from going up! And, my favourite: think how much lighter our rucksacks will be when we run out of food!
And although there are ways around at least a few of the potential problems - going on a group outing to the kind of country overflowing with willing locals prepared to carry your pack for a couple of quid a day and a pat on the head, or in Europe with a company that will carry your luggage between one well-appointed inn and the next - but then where's the fun in that? The best walking holidays - and please note, it's always 'walking', never 'rambling', although if you're trying to big it up a bit for your friends back home, 'hiking' is also acceptable - are always those that involve getting a little bit lost and a little bit exhausted with just the hint of a brush with death.
It makes a better story. Your dinner will taste nicer. And anyway, the best places to stay in are at the top of the mountains, not the bottom. In every mountainous country in Europe - France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland - there's a system of high-mountain refuges, hutte in German, rifugio in Italian, refuge in French, where you're guaranteed a bed, a hot meal, plentiful alcohol, possibly a shower and an evening of multi-lingual fun with a bunch of fellow hikees, one of whom will inevitably be a Dutchman who will take a special pleasure in parading around the communal washing facilities dressed only in a pair of grey underpants.
Ah, yes! The joys of refuges. They really are a joy, built in some of the highest and wildest places in Europe, usually inaccessible by road with supplies arriving by helicopter or goods cable and dirt cheap. Dinner, bed and breakfast doesn't cost more than about £15 and for that you'll get fine, hearty peasant food - and the kind of view that you can usually only see from a plane.
Because nothing beats a walking holiday. Really, it doesn't. It helps if you have the hygiene standards of a teenage boy and are prepared to see the fun side of walking uphill for eight hours with a heavy weight on your back, but I've converted the unlikeliest people: my friend Ako - the only person I've ever seen who makes hiking gear look chic; my slothful friend Jim who got blisters on his bum cheeks but still thought it was one of the best holidays he'd ever had; my eight-year-old niece.
But then, what's not to like about a log-cabin at the top of a peak in the Italian Alps with candles for lighting and a log-burning stove for warmth? Or something that looked more like a garden shed in Corsica, but was next to the most beautiful Alpine pool and waterfall I've ever seen, or a grand 19th-century affair high on a lonely plateau in the French Alps that had proper bedrooms, plentiful hot water and a choice of games to play in front of a roaring fire? And the beauty of it is you never know which of these scenarios you'll get until you arrive.
I don't have a best walking holiday. Or, at least, it tends to be wherever I went last. So, Slovenia it is, where the huts are charmingly old-fashioned, the mountains high and rocky, and the dispensing of plum brandy to stray foreigners a matter of national pride. Take a £29 Ryanair flight to Klagenfurt, drive an hour to Lake Bohinj and then put one foot in front of the other. Vaseline, incidentally, works wonders on those bum cheeks.
