Have you hugged a mountain today?

Beach, forest, lake...or mountain?

Sand, wood, water...or granite?

Which floats your boat, rattles your cage or yanks your chain?

Prefer slopping suntan lotion on your pale wobbly bits and rolling over after every 15 pages of the latest Sophie Kinsella chick-lit bonk-fest novel;

bonding with the family in a drafty log cabin in the middle of a vast Scandinavian forest, eating another plate of pickled herring while Sophie (10) and James (12) argue about who's going to use the laptop instead of going for yet another canoe trip on the deserted lake;

or yomping amongst snow-tipped peaks, rucksacks laden with hard-boiled eggs and baguettes stuffed with local ham and cheese, stretching your hamstrings for 5 hours at the same time as the blank canvas of your mind?

OK, so I've loaded the question just a tad....but I have definitely been seduced by mountains in recent years

It wasn't always like this. Probably just an age thing. Mention walking, or climbing or, worse, camping a few years ago and I would have slapped you in the face with my sodden Bacardi towel, dripping from a cooling swim on Elbow Beach under the midday sun

Yet here we are, planning a slow painful trek up nearly 20,000 feet of African volcano. And I can't wait. I almost want to hug a mountain as soon as I see one, and I just know I'm going to fall in love with Kilimanjaro on the first date, especially after exploring her forests, plains, heaths and crevasses with ever increasing breathlessness

Hopefully the climax will be reaching the summit at Uhuru peak as the sun bursts into life over the Serengeti landscape a long, long way below. But there's every chance that I'll be dumped before then, leaving a sad old man rejected by the timeless beauty of the proud mountain like many before me, out of oxygen but ridiculously still in love and awe

I wonder if Interflora would deliver a nice seasonal bouquet to Tanzania next week...