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“Just inch along the edge, that’s it,” encourages Penny from the far end of the ledge, “flatten yourself against the mountain side.”

“Find a hand hold,” adds Eric, following close behind.

“Watch your camera,” they suddenly chorus, “watch your camera!”

With a sheer 2000 metre drop behind me, the bulky Cannon around my neck has become wedged between me and the rock face I am clinging to. The more I try to shuffle sideways along the half-metre wide ledge, the further the camera is pushing me away from the cliff, the more the 18 kilo pack on my back threatens to unbalance me, sending me over the edge.

For a moment I freeze. The only sound is the thwack of a Corsican mountain breeze. For once, experienced climbers Eric and Penny seem lost for advice. My legs begin to tremble. A woosh of dread floods my stomach, spilling into my chest.

I don’t remember what happens next. Penny tells me later that she sees me slowly lower my head, raise my right shoulder toward my mouth, pick up the strap of my camera with my teeth and manoeuvre the obstruction out of the way. She adds, a little unnecessarily I think, that the momentum of shifting the camera brings me closer than ever to falling and that finally, I lurch and teeter the remaining few metres to safety.

“Now, that was close,” grins Eric, as he arrives behind me at the end of the ledge.

A flush of relief is coursing around my body and I am bear-hugging Penny’s rucksack in front of me. The three of us have formed an involuntary and immobile conga-line, like a trio of backpackers on a rush-hour commuter train.

Eventually, Penny moves. I watch as she deftly finds foot and hand holds and pulls herself up into the cleft ahead. Shakily I follow the same course, yanking myself into the space between two broad slabs. Eric joins us and we pause for breath. Then Penny pushes on to the end of the gap.

“Oh no,” I’m sure I hear her say.

When I reach her I can see why. Below us is a drop of at least two body lengths to a ledge that is nearly as emaciated as the one we’ve just left behind.

“Oh no,” I mumble unoriginally.

Oh well, if you are going to go, then it might as well be by plunging off a snow-draped peak in the middle of Europe’s most ruggedly beautiful island.

It has taken six months of planning for us to even get to the start of the Grande Route 20, the “footpath” which traverses the French-ruled island of Corsica from north to south, and about ninety seconds for me to realise that I am in no way prepared for it. The fact that the GR20 is billed as “Europe’s most demanding walking trail” may have been a clue to its level of difficulty but it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is actually more of a rock-climb. To the truly adventurous Eric and Penny, whose recent exploits include climbing the infamous Mont Blanc and then paragliding off its summit, this obviously presents no obstacle. To me, who gets nervous hopping across boulders at the beach, it’s a big problem.

My moment of recognition comes on the afternoon of our third day on the GR20. We had met four days earlier in the northern coastal resort of Calvi, not far from the start of the trail in the hillside village of Calenzana. The adventurers were fresh from a fortnight exploring Corsica in their campervan and I was still groggy from the long flight to Europe, including the French farce I’d endured in getting to the island from Paris with Air France. They had all the equipment we would need – tents, sleeping bags, gas cooker, fleeces and walking poles - and I had, well, virtually nothing except for a bucket full of enthusiasm and a job lot of dehydrated food with names like “Curri Inna Hurry” and “Barbie’s Dhal”.

Never mind, the following morning we were on our way, having deposited the campervan and anything inessential to our walk, in Calenzana, with local man, Monsieur Nicodimi. As we made our final adjustments to our weighty packs, Monsieur Nicodimi warned us about the wild pigs – capable, apparently, of demolishing our tents in the middle of the night - but was otherwise all smiles and encouragement.

“I wish I was coming with you,” he said, “but I can’t – my leg wont allow me.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I ventured.

“I broke it in six places,” he replied, patting the gammy limb. “It happened up there on the GR20,” he continued, gesturing to the mountains we were about to trek into.

As soon as we start walking uphill out of Calenzana, I have more cause to worry. I am quickly breathless and allthough it is only a mild early summer’s day I am sweating profusely. I curse myself for not doing more physical preparation. More than none that is.

The feeling of self-recrimination grows as I grunt and groan my way up 1600 metres of ascents that morning. While the GR20 begins as a circuitous path uphill it soon becomes little more than sploshes of red and white paint, marking the way, across slippery mountain rocks. The higher we get, the more we have to crawl and scramble - as it is known in climbing circles – wobbling from side to side with the weight of our packs.

It is nearly five o’clock before we find a suitable stop for lunch, on a grassy knoll overlooking the horse-shoe shaped bay of Calvi, shimmering in the distance. My aching body wishes we could stay there for the night. But if we are to meet our objective of completing the 140 kilometre of the GR20 in fifteen days, then we must move on.

We reach our camping spot – overlooking a steeply sided valley turned golden by the sunset – after three more hours. It is only now, having previously forbidden myself to look either behind or below me, that I realise how high we are. By now my body is in shock. It is all I can do to shovel some lentils and couscous into my mouth. That night, as I lie in my sleeping bag, I attempt the last of around three thousand stretches and propel my entire lower half into a jarring cramp from which I can barely escape.

The following morning a young Scotsman turns up at the campsite with the hardly reassuring news that he has lost his walking companion on their very first morning on the GR20. All sorts of doom-and-gloom scenarios cross our minds as we help him work out what to do. In the end he elects to return to Calenzana to wait for news of his friend.

Ahead of us is another day of laborious ascents and tricky traverses as we trek nearer and nearer the snow line. Behind us, the Mediterranean continues to glisten in the crescent of Calvi’s bay. Beneath us the lunge toward untouched valleys becomes more and more sheer. Ahead of us the greys, cool greens and off whites of the Corsican mountains spread out toward the horizon. The sublime views are well worth the climb but sadly the higher we get, the more my vision is blurring.

At lunch, at a particularly vertiginous spot, surrounded by gnarled, snow-topped granite pinnacles soaring into the deep-blue summer sky, Eric and Penny can see I am in need of some support.

“We think you can do it,” they declare, unprompted.

My heart sinks. Up until now I have only been able to concentrate on dragging myself up and across these infernal, lonely mountains. Now I realise, I am hindering their progress.

“I’m sorry, I’m slowing you down, aren’t I?” I ask subtly.

“A little bit”, agrees Penny. “But we think you are doing really well”, they both add.

Really well for a desperately unfit, frighteningly inexperienced eejit, I feel like they are saying. Just how out of condition I am is made clear to me as we set off on the knee-jarring 800 metres of descent to our next campsite. First, a party of short-legged, corpulent Frenchmen flash by, then a young couple, he carrying a baby (yes, a six month old baby) skips past and finally, we are bypassed by a sickly-looking skinny bloke and his collie-dog.

Then nearing the end of the descent I trip. Nothing too theatrical, just a stumble over my own walking pole brought about by fatigue, but in another location it could have been fatal. As I land in some scrub at the side of the trail, I am already thinking seriously about giving away the GR20.

That night, my spirits, like my levels of energy, are close to their lowest ebb. Not even the freezing mountain-water shower can refresh me and I crash into my sleeping bag, desperately craving a full night’s rest. Unfortunately, the campsite’s resident horse has other ideas. All night, it clops around on the loose stones close to my tent, sounding like a very large, very unsurefooted drunk, about to collapse on my head. Give me the wild pigs anyday.

On the third morning I am astonishingly sprightly. Perhaps my body has simply got used to the exertions I am putting it through and is digging deep into its resources to find the file marked “physical effort”, which has not been opened for many years. Whatever, as we cross a suspension bridge, strung high over a hungry ravine, my legs are carrying their load with ease.

The good day continues as we ascend the steep-sided gorge and find ourselves in the midst of the most jagged and precipitous rock-spires so far. It is a beautiful day too, the sky a vivid cobalt blue, the sun warm and energising. We stop for lunch beside a cyan-colored mountain pool, sitting back to survey the succession of bony ridges we have just ascended through. For the first time on the GR20, I am actually enjoying myself.

But after lunch there is a new challenge, that of trudging up an 80 degree, 200 metre incline through knee-deep snow. The trick here is to kick your toes hard into the powdery white-stuff to secure a boothold and to try, where possible, to follow the well worn tracks of the day’s previous walkers. To begin I do fine but near the half-way point I strike the snow a little too violently and it gives way beneath me. For a second I think I am plunging into an abyss. Then, buried up to my waist, my feet connect with some slippery mountain shale.

I haul myself out of the frosty hollow and after half-an-hour emerge at the top of the tallest peak we have yet climbed. From here, the views are as giddying as you could possibly desire. We would like to dwell longer on this rocky outcrop to take them in. However, under the scanty cover of nearby shrubs, a young Corsican couple are currently in the process of joining the mile-high club.

It is minutes later when I find myself teetering at the thin end of the ledge and seconds after that when I am confronted by that equally traumatic drop to the next secure foothold.

As an adult I have never felt more like an infant than I do at this moment. I am completely at the mercy of Eric and Penny’s parental coaxing.

Penny goes down ahead of me, proceeding slow enough to let me know that even for her, this 3 metre descent, at the edge of a 2000 metre plummet, is anything but routine.

Then it’s my turn. I take off my rucksack and listen carefully to instruction.

“Don’t move until you’re sure you can reach the foothold” Eric tells me. “Take your time,” adds Penny, “we’ve got as long as you need.”

It’s impossible not to look down. I try to develop myopia, concentrating only on the rockface in front of me. I can’t stop trembling. My palms are wet with sweat. To begin, Eric presses me against the rock from above. Then, there is a yawning section when neither of them can reach me. In the final third, I suffer the indignity of Penny pushing me by my backside into the cliff.

It is the longest five minutes of my life. But somehow I make it.

For the rest of that third day I am in a sort of trance. All around me there are granite peaks shaped like crumpled druids hats and below me lie thickly forested valleys and velvet mountain meadows. But my camera remains firmly secreted in my backpack.

In my head, the faces of those I love appear, followed swiftly by a succession of pictures from my past. These are mostly images of times when I have tested myself, believing, with the bravado of youth, that I was somehow invicible. Now, I know for sure, I am not.

That evening, at our campsite, adjacent to the ski resort of Asco, I tell Eric and Penny that I am giving up on my dream of completing the Grande Route 20. They try to convince me otherwise but they can see the defeat and exhaustion in my face. Even the felicitous arrival of the Scot who had lost his friend on the first day, but since rediscovered him, makes no difference.

On a gleaming dawn the next day I wave goodbye to my adventurous friends as they trek towards the notorious Cirque du Solitude, reputedly the GR20’s most arduous but spectacular section.

For me, ten days of discovering some rather safer parts of Corsica lie ahead. But first I must throw myself once more on the mercy of others by hitchhiking to the nearest hill-town, the island’s former capital and centre of anti-French nationalism, Corte. Thankfully, my progress could not be smoother, as lift swiftly follows lift, and I find myself in the town square by lunchtime.

That evening, over dinner in a restaurant above the town, I plan the rest of my trip around Corsica. Tomorrow, I will head away from the hills which are island’s essence, toward the coastline which defines it. I am happy to be down here in the safety of Corte but sad to have given away the chance to experience more of the might and majesty of the Corsican mountains.

It is dusk by the time I finish dinner. Nearby, throngs of sparrows are flying in mists from rooftop to terracotta rooftop. The evening light is blanched and thin. The town’s street lamps are coming on. I gaze up at the peaks beyond Corte. The sunset has turned them blood red. And there hovering toward them is a helicopter, bearing the unmistakable insignia of the mountain-rescue department.

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