I see the mountain (La Concha translates to The Shell) from the apartment every year I go to Spain, rising high in the background with a superimposed look, but it’s very real.

I was driven over to a place which is also a national park meeting a friend of my brothers called Alex.

Straight out of the car park we began our walk down the road to an olive grove, through a woodland and up through a few rocks to our first sign-post. I was already feeling it then! I am clearly not as fit as I should be.

At the same time I was running the Nike fitness app on my phone so I could record my stats going up. This was annoying for me because she kept saying “workout paused!” And “resuming workout!”.

Up we went and I was making sure I had careful footing as there seemed to be a lot of loose rock. I hear Alex up ahead, “Come on this is easy” my reply was “maybe to you but this is alien terrain to me!”.

We stopped for a break half way up.

We carried on to the top, passing three points which were a bit more challenging hence they added chains to the mountain side to assist you. At the top I turned off my Nike app recording 6.5KM it said I had climbed an elevation of 546 metres and had only burned 368 calories. I don’t know how accurate the app was but I turned it off at that point. Knowing I had to walk back the way we came meant that’s doubling the stats!! A fair bit easier but it was still hard work.