Of all the 'activity' holidays I have never been tempted to go on, walking is at least something I can already do. Rare is the day that I don't venture up to the village for a newspaper or a loaf of bread - often when the gates on the level crossing are down, forcing my laughably wooden hamstrings over the railway bridge. So, yes - a walking holiday in sunny Sicily. Why not? Even Mount Etna sounds like fun. Didn't I once spend an afternoon on Vesuvius with my wife about 25 summers ago, strolling in the dust in our T-shirts and trainers, having taking a bus from nearby Herculaneum? It couldn't have been more leisurely. Admittedly, Sicily does all look a bit uphill in the brochure, but it's still just walking, right? It's not as if we'll be hanging on to ropes.
As for the tips about trekking poles and anoraks - well I'm happy to humour the organisers by popping down to Blacks to get fitted out in some of that modern fetishistic outdoor wear that does all the breathing for you, plus a nice pair of walking boots so light you can eat them without ruining your appetite.
As it turns out, the boots get plenty of practice when I land at Milan airport and find (for reasons explained only in Italian shrugs) that I now have to wait four hours for my connecting flight rather than just hopping on to the next one as promised on my ticket. Traipsing endlessly round shops selling perfume and leather-bound male grooming requisites has never seemed less necessary, though I do bump into the rest of my group (identified by our luggage tags and anxious frowns) and get in some early bonding as we sit for a while in the cafe and watch each other's beards grow. There's me, there's Bob, an avuncular software engineer who likes bell-ringing, then Dr Eric and Dr Sheila and their brainy 17-year-old Helen, who isn't a doctor but could probably be one in her spare time if she wanted to, and Anna, who consults in IT and is interested in chocolate. Others are dotted around. Will we ever get to Sicily?
We do, of course, though not until it's dark and chucking it down with rain, by which time we could have walked to Los Angeles. But the general mood starts to lift. We meet our leader and guide, Luca (one of those dark, tousled, blue-eyed, muscular, handsome, clever, square-jawed Italian geology-studying types that women inexplicably find attractive) and are soon on the bus, heading for the hills, discussing lava and enjoying the age-old pantomime of Italian motorists up each other's arses in the fast lane.
Yes there's a bit of a moment when we get to the hotel and find that Bob and I have been given a nice big double bed but, hey, we're men of the world, or Bob is, having been born during the war, and even if he hadn't would at least remember Morecambe and Wise sitting up in their pyjamas together on telly every week with no public outcry, Ernie reading a book and Eric smoking his pipe. 'When in Rome,' Bob says, switching our telly on.
We kill an hour before dinner watching the news, Bob thoughtfully translating with the aid of a concise phrasebook while at the same time explaining in surprising detail how mobile phones work. 'Believe it or not, I've been divorced three times,' he adds. I think Bob and I are going to be great roommates.
Dinner is hearty, and livelier than you might expect from people who have been up since three in the morning, and we all go off to bed yawning. Next morning I'm roused by Bob's alarm, and then a second time by Bob blowing his nose. We pack our 'day sacks' (Bob is scratching his head now over where he left his geological magnifying glass) and gather with the others under the walnut trees. Then it's on the bus and up the winding hill. From here we can see the white peak of Etna but we're not going up there today, thank God, just a gentle 'flat' walk, Luca says, as we set out across the terrain of black ash, then pick our way over the lava flow from the 2002 eruption, which looks like a ploughed field but is actually rock-hard, being, well... made of rocks. There are some amazing trees flayed like skeletons by the sudden heat, but hardy scrub has grown back and camomile and lichens and thorny ground cover which Luca says the Italians call 'mother-in-law's cushion'. We all dutifully laugh.
We find the skull of an animal, which young Helen identifies as a herbivore, but now there's a bit of an incline up the flattened rocks of a stream, and before too long we find ourselves in single file climbing the rim of a huge crater into an Arctic gale. It's bracing, but it would be a shame to be swept to my death on the first day. Apparently the descent can play havoc with your knees, so it's out with my new telescopic sticks, aided by Rachel (maths teacher) and Nigel (hazardous waste), who are kind enough to tell me which way anticlockwise is.
Every now and then we stop to be told about something. Surrounded by scientists, I decide to wear my donkey ignorance lightly, stroking my chin with the rest when Luca opens his file to explain about magma and aquifers and how the craters here sprang up like a row of exploding buttons. We've just about reached the road by the time it starts pouring with rain again. Luckily there's a cafe here, where we furtively eat our packed lunches while pretending to browse through the Etna postcards, T-shirts and calendars and Jesus masks made out of lava.
I'm quite fatigued by now and ready for a Radox bath, but no, we're back on the bus and off to a nearby cobbled town for an interesting talk by a nice German woman about the 2002 eruption, in which hotel guests took to the streets still holding their knives and forks. But life goes on, she says. New ski runs and cabins and car parks are being built. After that we're back on the bus and zigzagging up to a hilltop vineyard for some wine-tasting, though conversation soon turns to billion-year-old tectonic movements. 'Scotland has some of the oldest rocks in the world,' Bob says. 'Of course, back then, Scotland was in Canada...'
Later, in our room, he shows me the video he made today on his tiny camera of the dead trees and another of us all walking on the ridge. Then we look at the rocks he has collected. Bob is a member of the Bath Geological Society and also makes his own beer. 'And don't forget the bellringing,' he says, as if I would. He makes me wish I had interests. Is daydreaming a hobby?
Next morning we're waiting for the bus at the hotel, staring with concern up at Etna. Luca has never seen so much snow in October. We'll just have to see how far up we can get, he says. It's unlikely that the cable cars will be running to the top. In the playground opposite the hotel, Bob is on the seesaw.
But off we go at last, chugging up the mountain as far as the bus can take us. The track from the road is a dazzling winter wonderland and the going is easy, though of course it cannot last. Having come steadily upwards, we now begin to cross the mountain horizontally, a more perilous route which soon involves clinging to a ledge in the teeth of a howling blizzard. It's at this point that Luca notices that my hands have suddenly changed into a pair of frozen chickens and wonders whether it might be an idea to put gloves on.
But how? After some undignified panicking and screaming on my part, Bob and Luca stuff them into a pair of overmitts and get me down to safe ground, where everyone stands watching with mild interest at my incontinent demands for an air ambulance. I'm impressed at how the walking fraternity can regard one's life-threatening traumas with such equanimity. Didn't that bloke in Touching the Void almost die of cold hands?
Bob starts a snowball fight and off we trudge again, until eventually we find a proper path back to the road and take shelter in a cafe selling Etna postcards, T-shirts and calendars and Jesus masks made out of lava. It's like Siberia out there. I'm so grateful for a cup of something hot, brown and steaming that I find myself nodding in firm agreement about what a splendid walk it has been.
Next morning we're up at 3am. Yes, three! How else are we to get down to the harbour in time to sit in the bus in the pouring rain without breakfast and wait till 7am for the first ferry to Stromboli? Ah, Stromboli is the mountain of God, Luca tells us, though he adds that because of the stormy conditions there's a slight chance we might end up in Naples. Not for nothing is the Aeolian Sea named after the god of preposterous winds. Sure enough, we are soon pitching and rolling and all the other descriptively colourful heaving movements that make you ill. Hours go by. Are we nearly there, yet? No, not until we've stopped off at every other island on the map.
Eventually, we stagger on to Stromboli, which is a nice little place - and bugger me if the sun's not out! We've just got time to drop our stuff at the hotel before we're up the mountain, which looks the business with its proper pointy shape and smoke coming out of the top. We've all been given a helmet in case of explosions, though Luca says cheerfully that it won't help if you do get hit by lumps of burning rock. Up we go for 15 minutes, then half an hour. It's steep going, but pretty great, with amazing views of the little white buildings below and the black fringe of beach, the jetty and lighthouse, a tiny boat moving on the water.
We stop for a moment and listen: from above comes the faint boom of the volcano going off. We press on. The sun's almost down and the temperature drops dramatically when we rest at the penultimate stage, marked by a set of concrete bunkers. We eat surrounded by aerials and other boffinesque paraphernalia, then when it's dark we walk up to the summit and wait. Looking across into the crater you can't see much for the clouds of smoke. But then there's a spreading red glow in the white mass and... blimey! With a bang, fiery rock and sparks shoot into the black sky, falling slowly back into the depths. It doesn't half make you jump. Brilliant though. We watch for a while then it's time to go.
I have been fretting about how we're supposed to get back down 3,000 feet in the dark, but Luca and his co-guide take us an easier way, half-sliding down the soft ash in single file, torches trained on the boots in front. After 15 or 20 minutes we're back on a sideways traverse until we locate the long downward path. Bob is repeating a terrible joke about chiropody. Later he has us singing theme tunes from 1970s TV comedies. We love Bob. It's all very exhilarating.
Sitting in the bar drinking beer - me now a bona fide adventurer like the rest of them - I feel I've got my walking legs at last. Which is just as well because of course there's more of the same the rest of the week as we flit from island to island (on the speedier hydrofoil this time). Vulcano with its pongy mudbaths and brimstone smoke and yellow rocks so hot you could barbecue sausages; Lipari with its unfathomable coastal path, nice restaurants and excellent hotel with my own bed; then back to Sicily, Bob enriching my bus journey with explanations of sine waves and steam locomotion as we head for an amazing gorge with idiosyncratic signs in English ('The river bed is often insidious with whirling waters'). Later we take a relaxing stroll through medieval Taormina with its Greek amphitheatre and views of the bay.
I feel quite naked without my trekking poles. I'm determined to use them when I get back home. Perhaps the next time I go for a paper.
Essentials
Phil Hogan travelled with Explore (0844 499 0901; explore.co.uk) on its eight-day Sicilian Volcano Hike which includes visits to Etna, Vulcano, Stromboli and Lipari.
The trip costs from £903 per person based on two sharing and including flights, accommodation and some meals. Tours depart between May and October.
Walking kit supplied courtesy of outdoor experts Blacks (blacks.co.uk).
