The other day I gave the son the compass, the head-lamp and the bush maps. Before that I’d given the daughter the microlight tent and assorted bits of camping gear.

The bush maps were in many cases tatty with the grime and sogginess of accumulated storms and trudging off into muddy parts of Tasmania. The tent stank of mouldy socks, metho and spaghetti carbonara.

To be honest, I’d hung onto it all for far too long, but when a totter to the clothesline with a basket of damp underpants and pillowslips had become an exercise in hardiness I figured it was time to call it a day. 

And damn me, even if it was a sobering realisation, I refused to acknowledge total defeat. 

Surely I could saddle up and go one more round with the bush. Those legs were made for walking. 

With a bit of a wriggle I could still fit into the fleecy-lined Nordic pants with the burn mark from where I almost set fire to the old Pelion hut. 

I even had the hide to fall back on the ‘not too bad for her age’ one liner, surely the last refuge of the vain and delusional.

Of course it was all stuff and nonsense. 

I have about as much hope of climbing Frenchmans Cap again as I do of winning the ladies singles at Wimbledon. 

But we are all the servants of hubris and here I was having to clamber down from the lofty heights of fighting fitness and stare in the face the ravages of time and the long-haul carting up hill and down dale of packs so naffing heavy I never should have chucked them on my back in the first place. 

So anyway, out went the lot. I have now saddled the kids not only with bushwalking gear they may or may not want, I have also saddled them with the notion they should put everything to purposeful use. 

Get cracking you two. Climb that mountain. Ford that stream. Dodge that tiger snake. I’m not playing lady bountiful with my stuff to have it sit around in the shed getting covered in mouse poo and dead blowies. 

They’ve been mighty grateful I have to say. Daughter is planning a long walk with a pal. Son has just come back from a three-dayer to Frenchmans Cap. 

It absolutely bucketed down most of the time and his party appears to have taken a climbing route only marginally less perilous than the north face of the Eiger. His knees are a bit done in. Know the feeling.

But they had nice food. Back in my day it was Continental brand anything so long as it included freeze-dried pasta. 

Many a dish of macaroni cheese got scoffed down in far places. 

Now everyone dines on north African tagines and beef with Burgundian wine. 

Some of those meals are so haute cuisine you’d swear Ainsley Harriot was trailing along in the rear with a catering crew. 

If you weren’t nearly killing yourself on a mountain you could enjoy that.