Escaping the wrath of Thor

I'm just back from 5 days in Italy where I had a rather scary moment. Following three days by the sea, dinghy sailing, swimming in the pool, jumping off cliffs etc, Hugo and I decided to go into the mountains. After buying a cracking picnic in a nearby town, we set off for the mountains to the north of Genoa from where we'd be able to walk around a lake. At a great viewpoint, we pulled over and decided to leave the car and climb up the rest of the hill in front of us, taking the picnic with us. We could see the lake we'd been aiming for, but it was shrouded in a dark gloom, so we decided to give it a miss and just picnic ontop of this great big hill instead. From the top (1150m) we could see dark clouds hanging over a valley beneath us quite far away. Ignoring the clouds we sat down to eat our picnic, enjoying the view around us. However, the dark clouds were fast moving and within minutes, thunder started cracking around us. As we were higher up than the storm, I assumed the storm would go around us and we'd see the whole thing from above. Big mistake. Another peal of thunder and I leapt to my feet. It was right overhead. Within seconds we'd be in the thick of things, so we packed everything back up again and started tearing down the hill. The car was a good 15 mins away down an exposed valley - no trees, shrubs, nothing. We managed to get about five minutes down from the very top when the next crack of thunder came, and with it this time, lightening too. We were near the edge of a wood so we decided to stick close to it, as surely we'd be safer underneath lots of trees than either underneath a lone tree, or underneath nothing, exposed in the mountain meadow. I desperately tried to remember my old science lessons - was it a tick next to man under tree, or a big skull and crossbones? There wasn't much time for wondering what to do as within 5 minutes, all around us became shrouded in torrential rain and the lightening was getting closer and closer. In fact, timing the seconds between the crack of thunder and the flash of lightening, I'd say the storm was directly above us. The dark angry clouds looked like something out of 'War of the Worlds.' The car was too far to make a safe break for, but it was becoming too dangerous to stay where we were. We wrapped the sarongs we'd bought to sit on for our picnic around us, to keep ourselves warm. There was no benefit now to being in the wood as we were getting soaked and if we did stay, we could be trapped there. Equally, I know from experience that electric summer storms like this last for hours in Italy. I imagined that as soon as we left our sheltered spot, we'd hear a crack and turn around to see the very tree that we'd been standing under going up in flames. With a last look around us, Hugo said that we'd be ok as it was still sheet lightening - high in the sky, rather than fork lightening. We ran out into the clearing and literally 20 seconds later, once we had run a good way away from the trees, there was a hideous crack of thunder and the most enormous fork of thunder struck the ground ahead of us. I screamed. A lot. I had absolutely no idea what was the best thing to do, but was determined not to get a place in the 'Darwin Awards' either! My heart was going mad with adrenaline. We decided to run, but I soon lost a flip flop which Hugo went back for, and then we both threw ourselves onto the ground as another bolt of lightening came down to the left of us. In the ten minutes it took to race down the mountainside to the car, we were sheltered by nothing and I had to run bare foot (as Hugo had one of my flip flops) down a stony, thorny mountain path, the rain was so thick we could barely see each other five meters apart. I had never been so happy to see a aged Renault Twingo in my life before, and we dived in headfirst, stripping off our soaking clothes, steam coming off our naked bodies. Even once in the car I was scared - we were still so exposed. We had been parked on a ridge between two peaks, and looking back as we drive away, I thought how stupid we'd been. The peak of the hill was shrouded in white rain and hail, and if we'd stayed up there, we would be in a right old pickle by now. Thank god for 'fight of flight'. I can honestly say I've never been so scared or intimidated by nature in my life.