It might be the perfect therapy for some who have been over-doing it, but Luke Hamilton’s summer’s day hike was hardly the ideal way to give aching limbs a break.

The far from relaxing day in the hills involved the Scotland back-row forward heading to Fort William directly from new club Edinburgh’s pre-season training camp to take on Britain’s highest mountain, before heading directly to the Lake District to negotiate Scafell Pike before completing the trip in Wales, tackling Snowdon. Many thousands may, down the years, have taken on the “Three Peak Challenge” - encompassing 23 miles of walking and a total ascent of 3064 metres down - but timing was everything.

“We did it in 23 hours, 50 minutes. After a pre-season camp it wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done,” he laughed.“Up and down Ben Nevis took four and a half hours in a thunderstorm and torrential rain. I was in shorts and T-shirt because I thought it looked quite nice when I set off. Then we had six hours in the car to Scafell Pike. We went up as the sun set, then walked back down in the dark, which was a very strange experience. Then we were back in the minibus to Snowdon. We got there for the sunrise and we only had an hour and 50 min to get up it.”

Nor was there the anticipated respite of a run on the funicular train after the last part peak had been reached.

“It doesn’t run till 10 o’clock,” Hamilton noted, in mock despair. “I climbed up and thought I would get the train back down, but then there would have been another four hours to wait.”

As much as it said about Hamilton’s physicality that he was able to do it, however, his reasons for accompanying close friend Brad Jenkins and his 56-year-old mother spoke to an attitude that should serve his team well.

“(Brad’s) stepfather had cancer for five and a half years and recently passed away. So, we were doing it for the local cancer ward in Withybush back home and we raised £4000,” he explained. “We only had eight weeks so that was quite good and we are very grateful to everyone who donated.”

There are echoes of that UK border-hopping challenge in Edinburgh’s start to the Pro14 season, heading first for Wales last weekend, where they took a losing bonus point from their 17-13 defeat to the Ospreys, then heading to Ulster this week, eventually playing their first competitive home league match the following week before hitting the road again to visit the fifth nation of these islands when they meet champions Leinster. Having enjoyed the Three Peak Challenge sufficiently to say he would like to take it on again, however, Hamilton is sufficiently seasoned to take all of that in his stride.

“It’s obviously swings and roundabouts. It is a tough start to the season for us, but at the end of the day you have to play everyone. It’s unfortunate to start with two away games, but we’ll roll our sleeves up and get on with it and take each week as it comes,” he said, pointing out that they also have the advantage of back-to-back home games ahead of the first of their European Champions Cup ties.

Signed from English side Leicester, the 26-year-old joked that he felt old when realising it was six years since he had faced this weekend’s opponents when he was with his first professional team Cardiff Blues, but after last weekend’s failure in Swansea he knows enough about visiting Belfast to be aware that they will have to step up their game if they are to challenge an Ulster side that defeated last year’s beaten finalists, the Scarlets, in their opening fixture.

“It was great to be out with the boys, but obviously we were bitterly disappointed with the result, especially at the end when we came so close,” he said. “We made a lot of errors, but to come so close at the end, the last play of the game when we could have won it, we were disappointed in ourselves. We let ourselves down a bit. We know that we are a lot better than that and we should be a lot better than that.”