I can’t really begin to describe the levels of anxiety reached today and it all started off so swimmingly, well that’s if you ignore my waking at 3.30 am needing the loo, fidgeting around until it got light, before trekking across the car park a couple of hours later. The overnight temperature has dropped too, so I am now a vision of loveliness, with hedgehog hair and glasses in my nightie and fleece heading for the facilities. The sight of the sunrise over the water made up for this indignity, well almost.

We had booked our private onsen for 10am and it was the nicest view we have had so far, looking out across the bay, perfect.

We headed off to Nagasaki, a relatively short hop of an hour, so we arrived in plenty of time to visit the Peace Park and Atomic Bomb Museum, another sobering couple of hours that makes you wonder, how the people who sanctioned it ever slept soundly again.

We had lunch (Jolly Pasta, a really passable Italian we discovered by chance in a nearby shopping centre) and then headed for our hotel for the night. What you need to understand, before I go on, is that Nagasaki is surrounded on three sides by mountains, so you are either on the valley floor or you are climbing. I will put my hand up and confess to putting the wrong location in Google Maps. Nagasaki Nisshokan (our hotel) and Nagasaki Cemetery (not our hotel) are quite similar (not) and it took me a while to realise my mistake, by which time we had scaled something that felt like the north face of the Eiger, in an ageing and rather large camper van. The Japanese clearly bury their dead very close to God and the roads got narrower with each turn, until I finally realised my mistake and had to tell Robert to stop and beg him not to go back the same way, because I was terrified the Van’s breaks would not survive the descent.

I take my hat off to Robert, had the roles been reversed (another reason why he drives and I navigate) I would have lost the plot with the navigator, but he just said “OK Hils where to next?” Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the route Google decided to take us on went through the park around a museum, with trees in the middle of the road, putting in doubt the ability of said large and ageing camper to squeeze through the gaps.

We finally, after much f…ing and blinding at the Sat Nav on the part of the navigator, arrived at a sign pointing to our hotel at the top of another narrow, almost vertical climb. At this point I abandoned ship and said I would walk up and check if the road got too narrow, if there was parking at the top etc. before we attempted the climb.

What had seemed like a good idea, turned into a 15 minute walk uphill which your average mountain goat would have been proud of. When I arrived at the hotel reception I must have looked like I felt (in need of oxygen and a lie down) because not 1, but 2, gentlemen from the concierge desk dashed out to see if they could help me.

It transpired we were in the right hotel, but the wrong part of it, so bless them they chauffeured me back to Robert and the camper (clearly they were of the opinion I wouldn’t survive the walk down) and then lead us to the right entrance, up a slightly less intimidating slope. The view over Nagasaki from our room was amazing, but was it worth the stress, I don’t think so.

The rest of our time in Nagasaki was great, good sightseeing, lovely bars and a fantastic yakitori restaurant, but for me it will forever be the place where we nearly ended up in the cemetery.