The best thing about Lake District walking is the talking: OPINION

Nine hours later, as we were descending our umpteenth peak of the day, he admitted he had lied.

‘Why?’ I asked angrily.

'Because if I'd told you how far the walk actually was you wouldn't have come,' he said, as if this were a perfectly acceptable and reasonable explanation.

I thought about this for a moment and then punched him in the face.

Actually that's not true. I'm not a violent man – although I did once gesticulated fairy angrily at a car driver who pushed in front of me in the petrol station queue (I regretted this immediately when I saw he had fairly large biceps and a tattoo of Satan on his forearm) – and besides I was too shattered to even shake hands with anyone, let alone punch them.

I like my walking but I like it is short, sharp bursts. I like to climb a mountain and then come back down.

My mate, however, has a different attitude. He's not just content with the one. Once up, he likes to stroll along the tops and the ridges and take in several peaks.

This is annoying because when we reach the top – or summit, if you want me to get really technical – I like to lie back and take in the view, reaching into my rucksack for a sandwich and my carefully prepared flask of tea. For me, that's the reward for climbing a mountain.

My friend, however, gets to a summit, hurls a stone on the cairn, then turns and says, 'right, onto the next one' – as if he's a businessman rushing to his next important meeting of the day.

‘For god's sake,’ I'll say, ‘can we not just sit for a while and appreciate the beauty?’

He'll consider this and, to his credit, will sit down and try. But after 30 seconds he gets bored, jumps up and says, 'right, we need to get off now - sunset's at 19:03 and we've still got 23 miles to walk'.