A very strange recurring dream has followed me for years. It tries to persuade me that there is a really dangerous, remote 4×4 road through a broken valley that I must accept as something from my past experience.

But it never existed.

I can visualise it in detail and am always afraid to go there. The other night I was negotiating the crooked, steep tracks on roller skates that somehow worked remarkably well despite the stony terrain. I coasted along narrow lanes above terrible drop-offs where only death would await. At the end of this road, every time, is Durban with its golden beaches — but I never get there.

There is plenty of personal meaning in that dream. It is not exactly a nightmare, but it is not very reassuring either.

This morning I connected it with something else. As a trainer of adventure guides and a risk-taker myself — I operate and lead rafting trips — I am forever worrying about possible accidents. You may take every precaution and follow every standard procedure, yet there is always the unforeseen hook that may catch you.

A terrifying article in VIRISTAR — an international adventure advisory service — points out that negligence is never covered by the indemnity forms clients routinely sign before launching into a guided adventure.

A young woman trying to ride a ski lift fell nine metres onto hard-packed snow and was permanently disfigured and disabled. A US court awarded millions in damages after finding that lift operators had failed to stop the lift while she hung from the chair.

That was negligence, for sure. But how many other accidents could occur in adventure activities that one could not possibly foresee? We always warn people that their safety cannot be guaranteed and that they must enter the experience with their eyes open.

Legal proceedings are on the rise, and the costs of insurance — along with the limits of what is covered — are shooting up. You would have to be daft to go into the adventure game for love or money.

I must be daft.

That is what my dream is telling me. I am lucky never to have fallen off that perilous 4×4 track. The more I push the limits (on roller skates, no less), the greater the risk. My subconscious is warning me to beware.

Psychoanalysts might have a field day with my dream, alleging all kinds of repressed feelings and hidden fears, but I know the main message.

And I go on. Strange. The allure of danger is its own reward.