by the fronds of stately willows.This was going to be a doddle.Eight hours later I was crashing, wide-eyed and breathless, through a thicket of malevolent brambles. My arms and legs were ripped by thorns, spotted with the burning Braille of nettles.The sun

’s voice ceased to make sense: the sound became a monstrous confluence of sound and smell, like bile dripping on red-hot corrugated iron. The dog grinned lecherously at me as it rogered a patient old Labrador. I collapsed, delirious, into the nettles

could see, the Amazonian rainforest came pretty close to the Garden of Eden. No nettles, no brambles, no midges, no mosquitoes. Just lofty, dignified trees and sinuous vines and cute little frogs and the odd, flesh-necrotising centipede.Frankly, I

is an adventure without them? There would be nettles, marshes, unruly farm dogs, agricultural chemicals, possibly electric fences. I might even encounter uncouth rural types, who would wave their sticks at me and shout obscenities in their rough, incomprehensible