Amendment to my last post: the coldest I have ever been in my life was not while I was canyoning in the Swiss Alps, but rather approximately 15 minutes after that, when I discovered the base shelter showers had no hot water.

My feet were frozen stiff and I literally could not bend them at all, and in those flimsy little wetsuit booties every tiny pebble I’d stepped on (which was a lot, given that I’d been walking through a river bed) opened up new worlds of pain.

Naturally, though, all four of had fallen instantly in love with our guides (you know these rugged extreme sports types!) but of course no-one really looks at their most attractive with blue lips and snot all over their faces.

In one part of the canyon a waterfall came down into a narrow opening between two cliffs into a small pool that can’t have been more than three feet deep, but was called the ‘washing machine’ because the waters were churning and swirling around so much it was impossible to stay on your feet. We had to cross through this one by one, and one by one every one of us inevitably lost our footing and started thrashing around wildly in sheer panic, which, when it’s happening to someone else, is absolutely the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, but when it happens to you all you can think about is the fact that someone will have to tell your parents you managed to drown in three feet of water…

…meanwhile the guides, who somehow always manage to stay on their feet, are pissing themselves laughing at your ineptitude for a good couple of minutes before they finally show mercy, pluck you out with one hand and set you on your way again.

Never in my life have I needed a cup of tea and a hot shower so badly.

…the leaders of an adventure company who run all kinds of activities like hang gliding, para gliging and bungy jumping, so at least our hangovers are productive this time. After some serious bacon and eggs we set out in the rain in search of some serious adventure (that is, we eye the price list warily, carefully select the cheapest thing available and even then finger our credit cards with the guilty expression of someone frittering away grandma’s pension money).

It turns out to be a half-day canyoning in the Alps. What be canyoning? you ask. Turns out it’s just like white-water rafting, only without the raft (hence the multitude of scrapes and bruises at the end of the day).

We’re suited up from neck to toe in wetsuits, wetsuit jackets, bright blue wind-cheater thingamajigs and finally life jackets. The helmets are so tight I worry my brain cells (what’s left of them) might start oozing out of my ears, and all have names scrawled acorss them in texta which we’re told is to help the photographer compile individual folios, but really I think it’s just so they can laugh at us. All the extra-large helmets read things like Sunflower and Daisy, and the small ones Tiger and Tank, that sort of thing.

So, with my comrades Starfish, God, Cock, Player, Single and Osama (appropriately, I was Princess), I spent the day launching myself head first into waterfalls, abseiling down cliffs and generally being the coldest I have ever been in my life.

Swiss trains are notoriously high tech, but en route to Interlaken today I’m certain this one was put in place specially to confuse us embattled foreigners, because it took all four of us to figure out how to flush the toilet without simultaneously setting off the hand dryer, the hot tap and the water filter.

This didn’t faze us so much, as we’ve all been painfully aware for years that technology is the enemy: what was more distressing was the sudden discovery by Stephi and Laura that neither of their palms bear any trace of lifelines. Now not only is technology against us, but nature is too.

Naturally enough, we arrive in Zweisimmen five minutes too late to meet our connecting train, so we have no choice but to board this rickety old cattle carriage with bench seats and a squat toilet to take us to some out-of-the-way village were we could meet up with our intended train.

Finally, after taking about seven hours to traverse a country the size of a big toenail, we arrive in Interlaken: a playground for rich snow bunnies during winter, in spring and summer it is the home of extreme sports in Switzerland.

We dump our bags in our hostel dorm, cringe at the number of American accents around and make straight for the bar, which is underground and resembles nothing so much as a dungeon due to Swiss noise regulations, which see the ’shush police’ hanging out the front all night to ensure that no-one who steps outside the door speaks in more than a whisper. But it is here in the bar that we meet…