I've been caught out in or been camping in so many thunderstorms it frightens me to think back. And they are frightening. And dangerous. Every bit of advice I've ever read about what to do in a thunderstorm has seemed sensible until I've been in circumstances where the lightning ignored it.

Camp under trees? - lighting hit a tree about 20yds away and it just blew up like it was hit by artillery. Sounded like it as well. Luckily none of the bits hit us.

Abandon the tent and head for a real building? - lightning hit the building next door and electrified the common water pipes. I was leaning against the sink and must have jumped about six feet.

I've never been caught on open ground but I have been caught on open water (in two canoes with the rest of my family!). That was really frightening as you could see the lightning bolts come down. It took us the best part of an hour to get to somewhere safer. What do you do? What can you do?

Ride away from it? - tried that a few times but the storm often develops faster than you can go and overtakes you. Lightning hit the roadside phone lines on poles virtually above our heads in one storm in northern Spain when we were trying to ride round it and it didn't work. You're supposed to be safe enough in a car in a lightning storm - Faraday cage and all - but on a bike? You're on the outside of the conductive metalwork and covered in water.

It's not only the lightning in storms that you need to worry about, it's the volume of water that suddenly appears. I've been flooded out of tents many times but it's not usually by water coming through the top of the tent but up through the bottom. Either there's loads of run- off when it comes through as a torrent or so much soaks in that previously dry ground becomes a swamp. Having a foot of water suddenly appear isn't that unusual and if it happens at night (and you're sleeping off a great night in a bar ) it could be fatal. Don't ask me how I know.

If you're near a river the levels can rise so fast you won't believe it, particularly if the river is in a cutting or a gorge. We spent the night in an evacuation centre once when the river came up almost instantly and we had to climb up the side of the gorge at night to escape (not quite rock climbing, there was a donkey track we could follow). Three other people were not so lucky and died. When we got back to our campsite the next day there were small dead fish everywhere from where the river had flooded through it.

So, lessons to be learnt? I've no idea, particularly with lightning. Flooding, and the effect of torrents of water uprooting and bringing down trees you can probably make some sort of guess at but most of the time with me it's been a case of hoping the odds are in my favour.