Oh well.

I was supposed to do the volcanoes walk on Saturday night as part of my Starlight Guide course. I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's 20 km, and starts with a 500m climb, which is obviously not ideal for a podgy writer with a bad case of Writer's Bottom. On the other hand, it's a famously beautiful walk, and I've always wanted to do it someday.

So I decided to make the deadline work for me and get fit. As I've said here before, I walked up Montaña de la Breña several times, slithered around half the Breña springs walk, and went to Mazo market and back by shank's pony. that didn't look like it was going to be enough, so I swore off caffeine and sugar on Monday. The withdrawal symptoms were tough, but I reasoned that after five days' abstinence, an energy drink like Red Bull or Burn ought to have the same effect as petrol on a barbecue, and get me up that first mountain.

And after all that, I got gastroenteritis on Saturday, and had to cancel.

I was pretty hacked off, but I did recover enough to join the group at Fuencaliente for breakfast, and the final class at the San Antonio volcano visitor's centre.

Oh well.