We cannot always choose our travelling companions

Obsessed with perfect paths and tucked-away tracks, Will Gore considers a horrific encounter with giant slugs, in the third reflection in this new series

It’s a fair bet that the guidebooks for the Auvergne district don’t mention the slimier breed of natives (Getty)

Slugs; thousands of them. Well, hundreds. Dozens at least. In fact, I actually saw just three – monsters each – but it would have been more had my mother not been walking ahead, covering as many of the slimy beasts as she could with fallen leaves. I didn’t find out about that till much later.

It was our first foreign holiday, a fortnight in the lush Auvergne region of France. We had driven and ferried from Cambridgeshire – in the days before flying became cheap – and arrived at the stone holiday home, with its shuttered windows and flagged floors, under blue skies. My brother and I immediately found a football to kick around the scrubby ground next to the whitewashed gable wall.

Two or three days in, the weather broke. It rained hard through the night, and in the morning clouds hung low as water dripped from roofs and trees. It was plainly not the kind of day for a trip to one of the nearby lakes so my father suggested a walk through the woods. As he did before all holidays, he had bought maps of the locality and assured us there was a short circular route nearby.

I wouldn’t say we necessarily set off with reluctance, but there was an absence of enthusiasm. The track leading away from the village was gloomy and thoroughly sodden. The deciduous trees on both sides of the path were densely packed and there was little of note to look at – just wetness and woodland.

In many ways I was a nervous child, easily frightened. Nonetheless, a phobia of slugs (molluscophobia) was at the outer reaches of my irrational fears. On that dank pathway in an Auvergne wood, it was forced into overdrive.

Slugs – on land and sea – come in all shapes and sizes (Getty)

Despite my parents’ best efforts to conceal them, after five minutes of walking I finally spotted one – a gruesome lump, russet shading to orange, six inches at least from antennae to tail and as thick as the choicest banana. I froze.

At last persuaded onward, scanning the way ahead closely, I eventually – inevitably – saw a second; and soon after, a third. These great, barely mobile blobs could of course do me no harm. But I refused to go on, so stricken was I by repulsed panic. I even demanded to be given a piggy-back on the return to our house; as I kept my eyes on the glistening leaves above my head.

Shortly before the track reached the firmer ground of the village road, we stopped by a pond to watch some newts. I like newts; they are friendly critters, animated and congenial – wet it’s true, but not slimy like slugs, or worms, or sea anemones. I would rather share future paths with them. But of course, you cannot always choose your travelling companions.

For the rest of the holiday, the sun returned – thank goodness – and the slugs retreated to their gungy lairs. We played a lot of football in the scrubby garden; but I made my brother collect the ball whenever it went over the fence – the grass was longer and lusher there. You couldn’t be sure what might be hiding.