INCHING nervously across a wet, metal rope, I looked down at the rocks and foaming river 40ft below, and thought: “This is a bit pazza.” Then a day later, as I clambered up and down slippery slopes in pitch-dark caverns with pipistrelle bats fluttering about my ears, I told myself: “Yup, this is definitely pazza.”

Yet here, in the heart of Italy’s Apennine mountains, I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing as I did the sort of daring things an auld codger who usually travels by free bus pass would previously have regarded as crazy — or, as they say in Italy, “pazza”.