When a holiday goes wrong

Looking back, the decision was a no-brainer. But it didn’t feel like it at the time

Wild Cardoon at Girachi Sicolo, Sicily

A couple of weeks ago, I was lying on the cold, hard floor of a pretty little Italian hotel room and quietly weeping, as my husband scrolled through his social media feeds. We’d just been on a long walk, including a gruelling climb uphill, in a temperature of over 30C. When we got back, in the mid afternoon, I was too exhausted to take my boots off and have a shower.

“Oh Ruth,” he said. He had no idea how to help me.

We had been on over a dozen similar holidays, walking hotel to hotel, luggage transported, all arrangements made. It was a formula that really worked for us, with a tour company we trusted completely. Most of our journeys had been great experiences. But this one, to Sicily in June, was different. It had gone badly from the first day, when despite wearing a money belt I’d lost my bank cards in Catania. From that moment I’d felt unsafe. I’d once been able to get by in Italian; now, I was rendered mute by social anxiety. I woke up each morning with a sense of dread, missing my regular routine of journalling and meditation. Even to think about home made tears prickle behind my eyelids. I was way outside my comfort zone, which had shrunk remarkably sine my cancer treatment a couple of years ago. I did not know how to get back there.

And then there was the weather. For various reasons, we’d scheduled this trip later into the summer than usual. Sicily, even the mountainous region we were heading for, was frying in a heatwave. Serious hiking was unwise, even lethal. A well-loved TV personality had recently died in 40C heat in Greece on a straightforward walk back to his holiday villa. I had got through many challenging walking trips in the past by giving myself a firm talking-to. But now I was 65, I was on bisphosphenate therapy to prevent my cancer returning, my bone density was low and I felt fragile. I knew I couldn’t do another walk like the one we’d just finished. And we were booked on five more days of them.

I had to go home. Just had to. In the end, I pulled myself together and did another, longer hike the next day, almost entirely without shade, on rough paths, with a similar level of ascent. I told myself that as long as I could rest in air-conditioned comfort and get a good night’s sleep, I’d hack it. But that night the locals had an outdoor disco that went on until three o’clock in the morning.

By six am I was certain I was having a breakdown. But I couldn’t bring myself to say what I needed to happen - a flight home, ideally, or at least a taxi to the next destination. I could barely communicate in English, let alone Italian, and we were in a place where very little English was spoken, even less, it seemed, understood. It was clearly a personal crisis, but neither of us felt it justified contacting the holiday company and inconveniencing other people. I could have got fitter, I could have brushed up my Italian, I could have done any number of things. This was on me, My own stupid fault.

Getting a taxi proved almost impossible, so in the end we tackled yet another long trek. This time I collapsed as soon as we reached a road. My heart rate was off the scale and I was paralysed with back pain after hours of rough walking. I lay under a tree in the shade and knew I couldn’t go on. It sounds so obvious, looking back on it. But for years I’d been able to do these things, now suddenly I couldn’t any more, and my overwhelming feelings were fear and shame.

I’m not interested in whether that backache was organic or pyschological in origin. Either way, it might well have saved my life. And my partner is not a monster, though changing his familiar thought patterns can sometimes feel a bit like turning a supertanker around. We got to safety, we modified the trip, we eventually got home in one piece. “It’s the end of an era,” he said, sadly. I think he’s right.

Of course, all these are privileged people’s problems. It can be very hard to admit a holiday has gone badly wrong. Back home people admire my tan, and I talk about the culture and the fascinating cities and wonderful food we enjoyed. I say we cut out a lot of the physical stuff because of the heat. It sounds like a very straightforward decision, a no-brainer. But it didn’t feel like that at the time. I defined myself as a hiking person, someone who gets on with it, doesn’t moan, doesn’t settle for a lounger on the beach. And that inability to see a changed reality could have killed me.

That’s pretty sobering.

In our hyper-individualistic culture, we can easily drift into the assumption that we can control our destiny, even when it turns out to include cancer, Covid and climate breakdown. All you have to do is want something hard enough. Well, for all the expense and faff of organising it, ultimately what I wanted was pretty trivial and egotistical. I wanted to go on having the kind of holiday I’d always had. Our relationship had blossomed through such trips over many years. I didn’t want that to end. I wasn’t sure what we would replace it with.

I’m still not sure. We’ve cancelled our next hiking adventure, and all I feel right now is relief. I look out at my suburban garden as I write my diary, I enjoy hearing the familiar cadences of English spoken by my neighbours through open windows, and I feel immensely grateful. And, if I’m honest, just a little boring.

But that’s my problem. It didn’t escalate into a medical emergency. How easily it could have done.