Our driver knotted his green tie with the authority of someone destined for great moments in life.
And then he explained in many languages, though not Urdu or English, that the toilet was not working at the back of the coach, which was to take us to Grenoble on the lower slopes of the French Alps.
His rich vowel sounds stretched like hot cheese until they reached the brassy pitch needed for such an important announcement. But having a keen ear for impish sentiment, your perambulating pensioner heard pleasure purr behind his message.
Of course, the efficacy of u-bends and related topics have for centuries haunted the highly sprung sensibilities of British travellers.
The simple question, “Were you able to go?”. carries so many emotions - anxiety, hope, frustration, and anticipation among them.
But, with my 23-year-old son, I was soon to walk, across the French Alps and into Italy, from Bramans to Susa, following the track taken by Hannibal, his army and elephants in 218 BC.
And up there in the clouds, nodding to the angels, the delicate refinements of modern living had no place.
For on the peaks and in the valleys, amid swamps, streams, waterfalls and deep stretches of postcard snow quilting the ravines with cunning, we were alone, except for the birds, insects and watchful, toffee-coloured goats.
In 71 years on Wirral, living in our crusty old pie of a town, I’ve never felt such a sensation. Our peninsula is urban and suburban with only a few stretches of wild country left. You are never far from other people, even on Bidston Hill, Thurstaston Common or the brooding beaches at dawn.
Indeed, most people here, and there are about 325,000 of us, have never been truly alone. But peace recharges the brain and fills it with ideas that can bloom uninterrupted. Maybe it’s good to do this once or twice in life - to be away from digital communication, chatter and insistent commercial pressures.
But there was something not entirely true about the sense of isolation I felt up there, 8,170 feet into the sky. For, as well as a rucksack, tent, sleeping bags, clothes and food, I carried memories.
They were of home. So, in the quiet, I heard the waking sighs of my wife, the kettle‘s whistle, the spurt of taps and the eager rush of a new day. Yet, still those lonely, God-blessed mountains loom behind my eyelids.
