Simon Calder at 25: The worst trips I’ve taken

Simon Calder is celebrating 25 years at The Independent. Here he looks back on his worst holidays

Goodness, most of these memories are very fresh (or possibly raw).

Here are the worst trips I’ve ever done.

2003: Chemin de la Mature, French Pyrenees

For the past 20 years I have been trying to complete the GR10 long-distance footpath along the line of the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, in the company of my pal and fellow writer, Mick Webb. We still haven’t finished, mainly due to getting lost repeatedly. (He is a lifelong Crystal Palace supporter, and therefore is accustomed to hope prevailing over reality.)

We managed to find our way to the start of the precipitous Chemin de la Mature, a rocky ledge hacked out of a cliff by 18th century convicts and is still used in the 21st century to punish anyone fearful of heights. With the sun setting, there was absolutely no choice but to walk the kilometre-long path.

2011: Family “holiday” to Scandinavia

Not (just) because of the prices, but due to a series of hoping-for-the-bests which went wrong. Having obliged the family the previous year in Norway to spend the night on the floor of Oslo airport after all attempts to find a hotel room failed, I tried to get things right. But no. The hostel I booked us into in Stavanger turned out to be a former ward that was still part of the city hospital. The overnight ferry from Stavanger to Hirtshals was packed with drunks (passengers, not crew) which made for as long a night as the one in Oslo airport. And when, next morning, I breezed into the Avis depot to pick up the promised rental car, none was available.

2014: Ascent of Aconcagua, Argentina

Climbing the highest peak in the Americas, in another forlorn attempt to overcome my fear of heights (see 2003), involved three weeks of bitter cold, lukewarm tea and plodding uphill with an unwelcome additional payload due to unusually strict rules on, er, bodily waste. But when I finally reached Santiago, still carrying more than my body weight in mountaineering excess baggage but thankfully nothing else, I dined splendidly on steak at the Bar Nacional in the knowledge I would never need to repeat the venture.

2016: A voyage from Greenland to Arctic Canada

Search online for my name and “worst holiday” and this is the one that pops up. In some respects, to call the Adventure Canada trip “North Korea on Sea” is inaccurate; nobody was executed for dissent by a firing squad using anti-aircraft guns. But at a cost of £1 for every minute of a two-week holiday, I hoped the family would spend less time drifting around incarcerated in an old Polish ferry and enjoy more than about one-third of the promised itinerary. I did see a polar bear, mind, but it was painted on the funnel of the ship.

2018: Stalingrad and Sochi

Say what you like about Vladimir Putin, but he wins the prize for best tourism promotion last year. After a highly successful World Cup, in which hundreds of thousands of supporters visited without visas, the Russian president announced anyone carrying the necessary Fan ID could return any time before the end of 2018. I made an excellent foray to Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir in November – but then went back for an extra fast-paced trip in December.

Due to a British Airways maintenance delay at Heathrow, I missed the connection for Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and arrived seven hours late. I was certain the subsequent flight to Sochi could not take off because of the blizzard, but it did. A highly unusual snowstorm in the Black Sea city scuppered most of my plans there, but I did get to Stalin’s Villa.