We are all supposed to remember where we were when we heard that Mrs Thatcher had resigned (my mother rang me while I was having a late breakfast). But I will always have a much more vivid memory of where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had called it a day. I was at a mountain refuge in Andorra when a Dutch hiker told me: ‘I’ve just spoken to my wife and she tells me your Boris Johnson has resigned.’ It turned out to be four days after the actual event. Between Boris appearing at his Downing Street lectern and me hearing about it I had managed to walk 100 miles across three countries, scale nearly a Mount Everest-worth of mountain passes and survive in my skimpy tent the foulest thunderstorm I have ever known.
To be about the last Briton to find out that the Prime Minister had quit is perhaps a bit embarrassing for someone who writes about politics. But there is something inside me that rather enjoyed being a latter-day Hiroo Onoda – the last Japanese soldier to find out that the second world war was over, surrendering on an island in the Philippines in 1974. Thanks to smartphones, holidays are no longer sanctuaries from the 24-hour news cycle. The blissful news blackout of a plane flight is being eroded as airlines start to relax a ban on mobile phones.
Even so, I managed to find the perfect place to take a sojourn from 2022. Several months ago, I reached one of those milestones in life which you can’t ignore: I became old enough to move into sheltered accommodation. I thought I would mark the occasion by strapping on a backpack and walking the 500 miles of the Haute Route de la Pyrenées, from Hendaye on the French Atlantic coast to Banyuls-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, taking in the highest peaks in between.
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