My determination to prove my mates wrong nearly led to hypothermia – Steve Canavan

As a result, I may have over-indulged when it came to alcohol, which meant I couldn’t drive home. 

The pub is four miles from my house and as we were finishing our final drink, I announced I was going to walk home.

‘No you won’t,’ they said, ‘you’re all talk’.

I guffawed and with the misplaced bravado that comes from drinking in excess of four pints of strong bitter, reminded them that a few years back I covered 52 miles in 14 hours as part of a long-distance walk in the Isle of Man.

We drained the final dregs from our pints and stepped outside the pub to discover it was freezing and tipping down with rain. There was a taxi rank 25 yards away.

All the group looked at me expectantly. Every inch of me screamed, ‘get a taxi,’ but I’m nothing if not bloody-minded.

So with a nonchalant wave of the hand, I said, ‘right, see you lot later’, turned in dramatic fashion and strode purposefully forward – imagining my friends would look on in awe and think what an amazing chap I was when in reality, as I found out later, big Dave turned to the others and said, ‘what a prat’.

The next 75 minutes are what I’d describe with some under-statement as deeply unpleasant.

Within half a mile I was soaking, shaking, and had lost all feeling in my right hand.

At the two-mile stage I had a very vivid image of my motionless corpse being discovered on the pavement the next morning and big Dave giving a tearful speech at my funeral (‘I begged him not to walk...’).

I stumbled through the door at just gone 1.30am (I’d left the pub shortly after midnight) and spent an hour lying in a hot bath in a bid to coax my body temperature back up above zero.

Midway through my bath a bleary-eyed Mrs C, having just woken, entered the bathroom. ‘What the hell are you doing, it’s 20 past two?’ she said, looking at me in confusion.

‘I’ve just nearly died darling,’ I whimpered, and described my heroic walk home.

‘Did you not have enough money for a taxi?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I stated. ‘Well, you’re an idiot then,’ she replied and marched out the bathroom and back to bed.

The lateness of the night and severity of my hangover meant not until the next evening was I fit enough to head back and retrieve the car I had left outside the pub.

Mrs C offered to give me a lift but feeling like a little fresh air would do my sickly head good, I announced I’d walk.

The weather was a little kinder – persistent drizzle as opposed to the thudding rain of the night before – and I was more prepared this time, donning a waterproof jacket, woolly hat, and some expensive gloves said to be effective ‘even if caught in Arctic conditions’.

I walked the four miles in under an hour and reached my car.

I pulled out the keys I had carefully placed in my coat pocket and clicked the unlock button.

Nothing. I clicked again. Nothing.

I peered at the key and realised, with a mixture of horror and depression, they weren’t my car keys but the keys to Mrs C’s car, parked safely outside our house four miles away.

I let out a series of expletives and was left with no other option but to trudge all the way back to my house, retrieve the correct keys (‘you absolute cretin,’ said Mrs C when I told her what had happened) and walk four miles back to the car.

By the time I finally got into my vehicle, I had walked 12 miles and it had taken almost four hours.

I will never drink again.