It's 0800 on Saturday morning on the top of Zawrat, a peak in the Polish Tatra mountains 2,159m above sea level. It's cold, it's foggy, it's rainy and visibility is little more than nil. I am terribly, terribly hungover and hungry. My mountain climbing buddy has already succumbed to those particular afflictions and gone back to our hut, leaving me with an enthusiastic young Polish guy called Vitek, who is trying his best to convince me to cross ridge that, in normal visibility, would be incredibly petrifying, but at the moment isn't - simply due to the fact that the cloud cover doesn't allow you to see how long it would take you to fall to your death.

I agree to go along, mostly because I didn't want to go the other, less terrifying way on my own. A broad grin cracks across his face as he tells me how happy that makes him - apparently it is 'strongly advised' to not take this route alone, due to the amount of people who fall to their death on it. My loudly-voiced second thoughts fall on deaf ears as Vitek is already bounding happily over the loose rocks, declaring what fun he's having.

He's right though - it is incredibly fun. There are chains embedded into the rock on the particularly difficult parts, and at one point there is a ladder that allows you to descend down a sheer cliff face. Vitek points down into the cloudy gloom and says "down there, you vould be fallink for a long time". We move swiftly on.

Three hours and a couple of heart-in-mouth moments later, we are back in the hut, having crossed over three other peaks; got a tiny bit lost on the way down; nearly caused an avalanche; got terribly drenched, and slipping and falling on my bum, which luckily happened well away from the scary ridge that was just waiting to punish such clumsiness.

It's the perfect end to three wonderful days in the mountains. We had aimed to get three peaks in three days, including Rysy, Poland's highest, but ended up with five. I ate goulash every single day, drank a nice amount of Tyskie, Zywiec and Okocim, and took an insane amount of beautiful photos. True, I did get woken up from my uncomfortable slumber on the train home by the man in front of me - I have never in my life experienced such a rancid body odour, which is saying something, coming from someone who occasionally gets a little whiffy too.

All in all though, a marvellous trip. I love the Tatra mountains.