The grand plan: a club biking holiday to the north of Scotland

And what actually happened: six of us went for a big nosh up in France.

We were going to Scotland, but we ended up on the continent. This sort of thing takes place all the time. Someone gets the map and starts reading it upside down, and before you know it everyone has gone off in the wrong direction. I've seen it! Things happen for the craziest reasons. But then, it has to be said: since I signed up with S&DMCC I've noticed that nobody has ever seemed to want things to go to plan

Whatever the reason, the holiday in France came together one Sunday afternoon at the end of a club rideout.

It's not that the idea of the holiday in Scotland wasn't popular. It had been kicked around enthusiastically all spring and early summer by a bunch of club members. But the prime mover, David Kinch, had to drop out suddenly owing to ill health and it looked for a while like the idea of a club holiday was about to roll over. But it didn't: It got picked up by Bill and Alan, and somehow, in the mysterious way of things, Scotland became France, dates in August got marked on calendars and everyone began to nod in agreement. (It was a pity about Scotland though: Bill's name had been mentioned in the same breath as the word 'kilt' and certain people had got to wondering...)

Right from the start our first stop was going to be ... Well, has anyone noticed that Bill is ever-so-slightly short tongued. This means he's actually not so good at pronouncing his 'Rs'. He also has trouble getting his sinuses around the Gallic honk. As a result, our first stop was going to be Woooo-oon or Wrune, or Rooan; (what the French inconveniently call Rouen). Like the trip itself, Rouen just seemed to happen, and that felt just fine too. As for the rest of the journey, in typical S&D fashion we left it to fate, which is to say, we left it to Bill.

Bill's master plan: to get some hard riding done in Northern France, Normandy and Brittany (700 miles in four days, plus an additional unplanned day trip from St Malo).

And what actually happened: we sat around in restaurants and bars for hours on end. We ate a lot (no, I mean, a LOT), and exercised our vocal chords - loudly and inappropriately in the best S&D manner.

Bill sweated over a hot PC for a week and got the route all worked out. He devised an itinerary using the RAC Routefinder, printed off the details, and handed them out to the rest of us. The plan was conceived with something approaching military precision and went like this: we would meet at Thurrock services on the evening of Saturday 14^th of August; from there, we'd ride down to Dover in time to catch the 19.45 ferry; we would arrive in Calais at 21.15 English Time (20.15, French time), travel straight down to Woooo-on, Wrune, Rooan or Rouen that night, and check in at our pre-booked hotel at approximately 1.00 am; the next day we'd ride the 180 miles to St Malo, stay two nights then ride the 300 miles back to St Quentin, south of Calais; on Thursday, the final day, we'd cross the border into Belgium (Why? Because, according to Phil, a) Belgians are exceptionally friendly, and b) their rolling tobacco is exceptionally cheap) then we'd travel back to Calais along the coast road, arriving in time to catch the 20.45 ferry; from Dover we'd ride back to Thurrock, take a break at the services and then disperse, tired, but happy travelers, to our homes.

It was a good plan. And we did get as far as Woooo-on.

Phase one of The Planned Holiday: to leave the ferry, travel to Rouen and be in our hotel beds by 1.00 Sunday morning

And what actually happened: Eeney, meeney, miney mo, Where did Rouen go (or, French roads have no sense of direction)

It was a messy start. There had been a fatality at Dartford that Saturday afternoon and there were tailbacks all along the north-eastern M25. Most of us arrived at Thurrock with left wrist syndrome. Beyond the Dartford Crossing, the ride down to Dover was faster and pleasanter. Bill and Julie's Fazer, Alan and Janet's Pan, my brand spanking new SV1000S (it left home that morning with 11 miles on the clock) and Phil's Yamaha thingy rolled onto the ferry and were not-so-briskly strapped down, and we all hoofed it up to the lounge ready for the real start of the holiday.

But, having no knowledge of P&O ferry etiquette we did not immediately stampede to the restaurant; we didn't think to push and elbow our way to the front of the queue and we didn't abuse the cook for taking so long about serving our meals (as many of the other travelers seemed to be doing). Instead, we hung around in the lounge for half an hour chatting to a Dutch biker who'd been 'doing England'. When we finally sauntered up the stairs to sample the 'International Cuisine' in the restaurant, it was to find the place empty of both food and customers. A few limp salads were dying slowly on the shelves, and there were one or two scattered sandwiches listing at odd angles. A kitchen assistant came out from a back room, trying hard not to look bored, and offered to scoop some of the remains of the international cuisine onto a plate. Not good. But at least it was the only time in our five days away that we would fail to get a decent meal. The ham in my salad was fresh at least, which is to say that it was still showing signs of rigor mortis, and it took so long to chew that we were already floating into Calais before I managed to get through it.

We disembarked, sniffed the cold French air, rolled away from the ferry, and faced three immediate problems.

The first problem was time. French time as we had realized on the ferry, is one hour ahead of British time, not (as Bill had reckoned) one hour behind. Translated, this meant we were going to roll into our hotel in Rouen at three o’clock and not one o'clock in the morning. The second problem was that by the time we had ridden 400 yards from the ferry terminal, it became blindingly clear that the people who devised the RAC route maps had never been to France. The third problem was that French roads go in both directions, and as you can only go in one direction at a time, it's as well to choose rather carefully.

From Calais, in the dark, arterial roads appear to go off in every direction: they skim over viaducts, duck down though underpasses and curl around themselves like snakes in trees. All these roads were evidently going somewhere, but none of those somewheres seemed to be anywhere near Rouen. The A16 (Was it the A16? We weren't even sure of that) extended ahead of us into the blackness of a very black French night. It was almost the night of the new moon, and beyond the aggressively humming floodlit factories, France (or whatever was out there) lay hidden in a profound darkness. Every quarter of a mile, slip roads suddenly spun off to places whose names we'd never heard of. And still there were no signs to Rouen.

Every quarter of a mile too, Bill, who was leading, pulled up on the hard shoulder down one of the slip roads to discuss what we should go next. As we invariably decided to carry on along the main road, there was then the weary business of walking the bikes the wrong way back up the slip road to the turning. My new bike was a lot heavier than I was used to (especially loaded up with far more luggage than I was ever going to need) and I was sure that sooner or later it was going to go down.

Then one of the bikes disappeared. Bill and Julie pulled up for the umpteenth time, I rolled in behind them and Phil followed, but there was no Alan and Janet. Everyone looked at one another, started talking, and made a big show of keeping calm.

Some way back down the road and just half an hour into the trip Alan, the back marker, had started to pull away after one of our hard shoulder stops when his weak ankle gave way on an adverse camber and the Pan (a third of a ton of bike) went down - taking Janet with it. His ankle was damaged in the drop. It could have been the end of the holiday. Fortunately his ankle wasn't broken, (though he didn't know that at the time, and it remained painful and a problem for the rest of the trip). Janet was unhurt. They managed to get their laden bike back shiny side up. It was only by sheer luck that, as they rode past the next turning they saw us 'organizing each other' in the darkness and stopped to rejoin us.

So, where were the signs to Rouen? We'd passed not a single one. It was obvious really - once you'd figured it out. There were no signs to Rouen because, basically, we were heading in the wrong direction. Bill noticed it first. We'd just passed a sign saying 'Brussels' and something lit up in his head. Once the simple distinction of East and West had become clear to us and we'd set off again in the opposite direction, France began to seem a much pleasanter place: the road was good, the traffic light, and the night air was fresh. From that moment on there were plenty of signs to Rouen, and it was pretty much a straight run from then on. There was nothing to do but keep on rolling for mile after mile after mile on an easy throttle and sniff the salt air that from time to time came in off the coast. We saw no reason why we should not make good progress. But then, we hadn't reckoned on Phil.

We quickly learned that when Phil feels the primitive urge to top up his tank he's like a man reacting to the sudden prompting of his bowels: it's a simple fact that when you've gotta go, you gotta go. Phil had got the call. And he'd seen a sign. Before anyone could stop him, he'd hared off down a slip road in search of fuel. The problem was, the sign he'd seen had just said 'Aire de something-or-other'. But a French 'Aire' is not like a British service station. In the UK, even at one of those tiny services tucked away at the side of the A200461, you can be sure of petrol, pie and chips (unless of course it's Sunday, or after six o'clock, or a member of staff has forgotten to bring 50p for the meter). In France, an 'Aire' can be anything from a full neon and tat service station to a picnic table and a tin khazi in the middle of nowhere. You-have-to-read-the-signs.

If you hadn't appreciated that - then neither had Phil. How could he have known that he'd gone belting off in the direction of a picnic table? (Has it ever occurred to anyone to wonder why Phil rides a 'Diversion') Once the fact of the picnic table had been absorbed, there remained the question of how to get back to the A16. You might think that this would be perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain. On a two-way road, you do a U-turn and you go back the way you have come. Obvious. it probably was. Just not to us.

I'll spare you the details, but basically we found ourselves travelling along a little 'B' road heading straight as a die into the matted blackness of the French countryside.

Now here is the curious bit. For some reason, we just kept on going.

It was Alan who first responded to the vague promptings of common sense and got us back to the main road, but by this time even a three o'clock arrival was now beginning to look a little unlikely.

Somehow, we did end up in Rouen. Though 'end up' is perhaps a little optimistic, since the mere fact of hitting the city is by no means the same ending your journey. Finding an out-of-the-way hotel in the middle of an unknown French town at three o'clock in the morning is not necessarily easy. The method we adopted was simple: you ask directions of a passer-by (in French), understand as much of the reply as you can (usually the first three or four words), follow the pointing finger till you get to a crossroads, then ask again. At first we did quite well. It took about ten minutes to find the right street, and then another half hour to pick out the hotel which was hidden away at the top of the road, round a corner, in a cul-de-sac, over a railway line and looked nothing like the photo on the web - but we did get to know that part of Rouen rather well.

We checked in, persuaded the night receptionist to make us a cup of tea, found our rooms and fell into bed. Janet and Alan, and Julie and Bill had one room each, Phil and I were sharing a third. (The jokes have all already been done). Phil and I crashed out, and turned out the light. The only thing visible in the darkness was the red glow of the digital clock on the television set. It was four-twelve. I lay staring at the ceiling. At four twenty-four I started to drift off. At four twenty-eight, Phil suddenly gave birth to a single enormous snore. My eyes snapped open. At four thirty-four Phil was snoring magnificently. And Phil snores like he does everything else - very loudly.

I've slept in dormitories and youth hostels, shared tents and camping barns all my life and I thought I knew everything there was to know about other people's snores, but I'd never heard anything like this. Phil has not one or two, but an entire repertory of snores. By four-fifty, I'd identified snores that resembled squeaking doors, motor mowers, stalling engines, howling dogs, cracked records (now, they were amazing! How did he do that?), and a load more. The last time I looked at the clock it was five eleven.

Phase two of The plan: to ride directly from Rouen to St Malo.

And what actually happened: When we eventually got up the next morning Phil declared he was knackered and wasn't going anywhere. We were all secretly relieved - until we noticed what he was intending to wear that day.

If you thought Phil was stocky, then you would be right, but you could be a little more precise. I bet you've never seen him wearing his red 'Virgin' T-shirt and ultra-short, crotch-hugging, gravity-defying nylon shorts. 'Compact' might be a better description. And, It did occur to me to wonder if his Y-fronts were up to the job. I have no idea what the French laws on decency are. By the way, if anyone is in any doubt as to Phil's loyalties, then they need look no further than the back of his legs. Bill did, - very closely and in considerable detail (there is a photo to prove it.). Phil's legs come with their own GB plates. He has one tattooed onto the back of each thigh. If you want details, I'll leave you to ask.

Bill too had decided to abandon trousers that morning for something more revealing, but whereas Phil's pants (and stature) were both short and compact, Bill's were long and loose. As the two of them walked side-by side through the city streets that morning, I did detect that there was the slightest sense of hanging back in the rest of us. But Phil didn't care. He strolled along with his slow, wide-boy shuffle, entertaining his French hosts with helpful suggestions on how they should conduct their private lives or improve the health of their bowels.

In the Place de St Marc, we came upon a busy Sunday Market. This was a decent-sized event selling produce, books, furniture and bric-a-brac. It was everybody's image of the French way of doing things: even the fruit and veg looked suave and the stalls were decked out as though they came with a three-year warranty. The stallholders were turned out immaculately. Phil cast his expert eye across the market produce and ungrudgingly pronounced it to be of excellent quality.

For the rest of the morning we wandered between the stalls, or sat at a nearby pavement cafe drinking, and picking at Alan's seemingly endless supply of chicken. A middle-aged Frenchman with a quirky smile took up a spare seat at our table (at first, we thought he was trying to muscle in on our bill - that's 'bill' with a small 'b'). Bill. (that's Bill with a big 'B') engaged him in 'conversation'. Bill, it turned out, has an easy knack of conversing with people, even when he can't speak a word of their language.

In the afternoon we wandered up into the older part of the town, past the enormous gothic pile of a cathedral with its nineteenth-century wrought-iron spire, (which made it look like a continental version of Blackpool Tower than a French cathedral). In the shadow of the cathedral we found another square and another open-air eating place and experienced another urgent need to sit down and order food. 'Stick by us', Alan and Janet had claimed, 'and you will never go hungry:' Over the next five days this boast proved to be highly accurate. And why not? This was France after all, and what does France mean, if not food?

And that is probably why we ate most of our evening meals in Chinese restaurants.

Our number one Chinese restaurant was in the centre of Rouen not far from the river. Here we discovered that French Chinese food bears little resemblance to its British counterpart. What do you make of a Chinese restaurant that has no concept for 'egg fried rice?'

The next morning, in the hotel dining room, Phil came down to breakfast later than the rest of us. He had abandoned his short shorts of the day before and was now sporting a pair of wide canvas stripes, making him look as though he had been assembled from the remains of a deckchair. Everyone was still too tired to pursue their ongoing interest in our rooming habits, and a stray question as to why Phil felt the need to wear something quite so loose first thing in the morning didn't get picked up. Instead, the conversation veered off onto the subject of how we were going to spend the day. The guy at the pavement cafe had somehow communicated to Bill that Le Harvre was a good place for a day trip. It wasn't far, which suited the mood, it was on the coast, which sounded good, and at that time we hadn't yet come to realise that the French are accomplished piss takers.

The revised plan: to ride out to Le Harvre and have a look around

And what actually happened: Le Harvre is a kind of down-market Hoxton, so we got out as quickly as we could and ended up in Honfleur... No, wait a minute, we didn't.

Right from the start of the holiday Julie's bladder had decided that with all the good food and drink and fresh air available, it needed to get a little more exercise. Pee stops became more and more frequent, and began to be one of the defining features of the trip. On occasion, these stops encountered logistical problems of a complexity that might have baffled the Allies during 'The Landings'. Women seem to have a more complicated view of these things

One of these stops took place at a crossroads in the bare Normandy sunshine on the way to Le Harvre. There was a large scruffy hummock planted with a few bushes in an angle of the two roads. It was a likely looking spot for a pee break, but it immediately presented Julie with several difficulties. The first problem was where exactly among the grass and bushes to go, the second was which way to get there, the third was how to cross the ditch, the fourth was, 'was it full of water?' the fifth was how to get up the opposite slope, the sixth was 'what was in the long grass?' the seventh was... well, that was Julie's business. Mission accomplished, we then went through most of these stages again, only in reverse. Fortunately, we were treated to a running commentary, so were able to keep up with her progress. The result, however, appeared to be very satisfactory and we got on our way without further ado

The countryside we passed through on our journey to the coast was wide and open, the villages tidy and attractive, in a well-scrubbed sort of way. And then we hit Le Harvre. Why waste words: Le Harvre is a dump - full of crappy, forlorn-looking buildings and road works. It was full of bottlenecks and torn posters on dirty bill boards, and full also of dusty, fed-up looking people. Or maybe the fed-up-looking-people was just us. Bill forced his way through the traffic as best he could, trying to find the town centre. We never did find it, or if we did, we didn't notice. With the aid of a guide book we decided to get out of there as quickly as possible and head for Honfleur, which was just a few miles away across the river.

The way out of Le Harvre was as dreary as the way in, but once we had escaped from its dirt and crud there was a surprise waiting for us. The road curved southwards and the landscape opened out towards the huge estuary of the river Seine. We crossed an elegant and impressive bridge, which spanned a side channel of the river, and it wasn't until we had passed over it and were coming down the ramp on the other side that we saw the real thing. Arching across the Seine proper, was the enormous sweeping curve of the magnificent Pont du Normandie.

After sex and bikes and Meatloaf there is only one thing that is worth getting excited about in my opnion, and that is a superbly designed bridge. (Bridge fetishism is well established in my family.) Two pairs of narrow white piers, each pair fused at the apex into a giant wishbone swept up from the river to support the main cables. Beneath them, the roadway rose and fell, spanning the mile-wide estuary in a strong parabolic arch. It was stupendous. I was having so much difficulty keeping my eyes on the road I was in danger of running into the back of another car - or into the back of Phil - which would have done very little for my already dented credibility.

Beyond the bridge, was Honfleur. Honfleur has some pretensions to gentility, and knows how to make money out of it. The town's harbour, now practically a marina, is surrounded by tall tile-covered buildings crammed together. They lean every so slightly this way and that, which gives them a carefully judged 'olde-worlde' appearance. Sited strategically at one corner of the harbour was an antique and unmistakably French double-decker carousel, which cast an air of Victoriana over the whole quayside. The town centre was smugly picturesque. Bill who had become the trip's official photographer, was snapping away for all he was worth

Honfleur is like a Cornish fishing town, but sunnier, and being French it gave the impression of being more interested in sophisticated forms of sexual and commercial shenanigans than incest, smuggling and piskies. Probe behind the surface though and it has the same line in cheap (and not-so-cheap) tat as other seaside resorts. In dozens, maybe hundreds of small shops crammed into the side streets there were tourists - droves of them, - nibbling away at the same gaudy bait you find the world over - but it was picturesque.

We made directly for a quayside restaurant table and settled down. We ordered a 'proper' French meal (no more Chinese, for now) and seasoned it with a heavy dose of plain English conversation. This revolved around sex, food, sex, bikes, Alan (sex), more food and various combinations of the same. Everyone instantly relaxed into the genteel atmosphere and gave every impression of thoroughly enjoying themselves. Janet demonstrated her ability to wolf down large quantities on mussels in record time and then almost got her head stuck in the pot they were served in trying to lap up the remains of the wine. Janet does enjoy her food. We sat around for what seemed hours. We could have stayed there hours longer, but there was the matter of finding somewhere to stay for the night.

The revised 'revised plan': we'd find a hotel near Honfleur, then go back into town for a drink and a meal.

And what actually happened: Honfleur didn't want us. The rain drowned us. Lisieux stupified us.

We had begun to enjoy the genteel lifestyle of Honfleur so much that we decided to find a hotel in town and enjoy it a little more. What we had completely overlooked, not just at that moment, but before we'd even crossed the Channel, was that August is the month of the French 'Holiday', when the entire country stops working, closes down its shops and businesses and rushes like lemmings to the coast. Honfleur was full. We tried a few hotels, but the message was always clear and always the same: 'complet' ('full up'). The only solution was to go inland, and this, we were advised, meant going to Lisieux. .

Apparently Lisieux was once a beautiful market town - before The Allies bombed the crap out of it at the end of the Second World War. You can still see a few older buildings (including a massive basilica) in the town centre today, but these older dots are mostly joined up by sixties architectural tat that make the place look like a less impressive version of Stevenage. Nevertheless, the town has a bustling tourist trade, thanks to its one enduring claim to fame. Liseux is the birthplace of St Theresa ('of Lisieux' - naturally), and it attracts the faithful by the busload. St Theresa is the only saint who had the good sense to be born after the invention of the camera and she has left an extensive photographic record of her life - a fact that has done wonders for the commercial survival of her birthplace.

All this is very appropriate, since Lisieux is just the kind of town that a famously boring saint might come from. Mind you, she might not have been as boring as everyone thinks. The guidebook says she did like to dress up as Joan of Arc and have herself chained to walls and posts and things. But sadly, the faithful have a knack of making even this interesting habit sound dull and saintly. My advice: unless you are a spiritual tourist (hands up! How many of these have we got in the S&D closet) I would advise you to give Lisieux a wide berth.

The road from Honfleur to Lisieux is very ordinary, but that afternoon it was also very wet. It was not long after we had left the remains of our bourgeois, quayside meal than the rain came pouring down. Most of us were in leathers or waterproofs. Alan, however, wasn't wearing any bike gear at all (unless you count a black tank-top and camouflage trousers as bike gear). When we got to Lisieux (about fifteen miles) Janet and I enquired at a couple of hotels. Everyone else ran for cover through the puddles, and sheltered in doorways - everyone that is, except Alan. Alan sat stoically on his bike in the pouring rain, arms casually folded across his chest, and would have looked like a drowned rat, except that he had a perfectly content expression on his face as though he were happily enjoying a sunny day in Benidorm.

Once we'd settled into our hotel, we needed to change and do some serious drying off. This gave Bill the opportunity of mooning in the corridor. It also gave Janet the opportunity of exhibiting the still totally unconcerned Alan, 'au naturel' on his bed (Janet had made a small concession to decency by providing him with a small towel.).

Roving round the empty streets of Lisieux that evening in search of food and alcohol, the idea finally dawned on us that we might have made teeny mistake. In an act of desperation, Bill started following a small, lonely crowd of people who gave the appearance of actually going somewhere. Perhaps they knew something we didn't. Maybe. But as they had the distinct appearance of lost souls going to an AA meeting the rest of us didn't hold out much hope. (In hindsight even an AA meeting might have given some relief.)

Half an hour of fruitless wandering later we finally stumbled unexpectedly on the throbbing heart of Lisieux: it appeared first as a glow of friendly light coming from the corner of a little square. It belonged to a pasta restaurant which lay opposite a bar with a pool table. St Theresa had witnessed our plight, and in her modest way had taken pity on us .

The word 'pub' appearing above the entrance to the bar became instantly attractive to Bill who disappeared through the narrow doorway before anyone else could open his or her mouth. Inside, the 'pub' was lined with dark timbers from floor to ceiling, and was trying hard to look like a 'dive' - a hard task in Lisieux. A few locals mooched sullenly around the bar. I played my first game of pool, and discovered that the fruits of a well-spent youth were of no value to me whatsoever.

That evening, we found our number two Chinese restaurant. It was hidden away up a side street on the corner of a small square, which looked as though it thought the Allies had not long left. It was a warm, humid night, so we ate outside at a pavement table. The Thai waitress was a giggler. She smiled excessively at everything we said and kept forgetting about the meal. We were all in a relaxed mood again, and the conversation ranged widely over the subjects of French food, sex, bikes, sex, parking restrictions, Alan (sex), Chinese food, dirty sex (hope you're getting the picture by now), the therapeutic uses of maggots and the mating habits of slugs.

Half way through the evening Bill decided to get 'friendly' with the waitress and started to make the sort of enquiries that generally lead to a proposal of marriage. The waitress giggled, shot indoors and was rapidly replaced by her husband, who attended on us the rest of the evening. Julie gave a long discourse on some of the more delicate details of her relationship with Bill (who didn't hear, as he was deeply occupied in studying some interesting-looking marks on a wall opposite). Then Phil loudly invited a woman who had appeared on a nearby balcony to 'jump' (we were unsure in what sense he meant this). And a good time was had by all.

On the way back to the hotel, Phil felt another of his uncontrollable urges. This time it was to relieve himself in a municipal flower bed. Now, I'm a nice, polite middle-class boy who has made a life's practice of blending quietly into the background. So, the best I could do at that moment was to pretend to be doing a bit of late night window shopping and blended as hard as I could. In my defense I will add that in an emergency, of course, I might have done the same - but I would have done it QUIETLY.

Bill, who was always ready with his trigger finger at a event such as this, preserved an image of the moment (and the piece of anatomy) for posterity.

The unexpected plan: to book another night in the hotel in Lisieux

And what actually happened: six shack up together in Deauville

Despite all the incentives we might have had to leave Lisieux as soon as possible, when it came to crunch time we decided to stay another night. We were tired and didn't want to go far, we could still get back to Honfleur easily enough from Lisieux, our gear was still wet and we didn't want to go to the trouble of packing it all up again and... we were just a lazy bunch of sods really. Trouble was, when we asked at reception there was no longer a room to be had - let alone three. Apparently some kind of conference had just hit town and was going to go on all week. I wasn't really surprised. If I were the Managing Director of a firm who had set up a conference and wanted to make sure his staff did some work, I would send them to Lisieux

A short ride later, we ran into Deauville, (the town, not the Honda motorcycle). Deauville is not far from Lisieux, and is only a short distance from Honfleur. It is the kind of town where you would expect to see plenty of white shirts and flashy gold-braided cravats. Deauville's glory days are gone - if it ever really had any, but the formal-dress Casino is still there (Bill was regretting not bringing his DJ and studded gold cuff links - of course), and it boasts a very wealthy-looking marina. But the first thing we saw on entering the town was not expensively paraded jewellery, but an Ibis hotel. If Stevenage can have one, then why not Deauville. The hotel overlooked the Marina and the Casino and, and everyone instantly recognised, was ideally suited to the sophisticated needs of six British bikers.

There were a few rooms left and they worked out pretty cheap. The only thing was that they were family rooms - for six. The holiday was getting cosier by the minute. There was a double bed 'Upstairs' on a kind of mezzanine affair that overlooked the rest of the 'room'. Bill and Julie got that. 'Downstairs' in the living space, there were twin single sofa beds. They went to Janet and Alan. And squashed into the 'entrance passage' opposite the loo there were two bunks. Yes, you guessed it, Phil and I were bunking up together again. Comments on a postcard please.

The successful plan: to spend the afternoon in Honfleur and the evening in Deauville.

And what actually happened: we spent the afternoon in Honfleur and the evening in Deauvile.

The bourgeois lifestyle had now become so ingrained that no sooner had we parked our bikes in the hotel garage and stowed our things in our room we lounged out into the refined sunlight to explore the town. We had decided to spend the morning in Deauville, then go back to in Honfleur in the afternoon. If Honfleur is picturesque, Deauville is pure Disney. Its perfectly laid cobbled or brick streets are fronted by ornate houses that look as though they had been built yesterday (complete with plastic gables and varnished bricks) and had been carefully polished only this morning before anyone had got up. The town centre is pure pastiche. The road intersections are occupied not by roundabouts, not even by fountains, but by sculpture-parks with water features, laid out with tasteful flower beds, hanging baskets and sprays. The place is so unreal that it could only have been dreamed up by the backroom boys from LA or the architects of Las Vegas. Nevertheless, there was no getting away from it, it suited us perfectly.

Overwhelmed by all this, we had no option but to make directly for a bar. We had drinks, walked briefly around another stylishly laid out market, and posed for Bill's ever-busy photographic finger in front of a fountain extravaganza. And then, of course, we settled down to the serious business of ordering breakfast/lunch/tea/dinner - one of those. - at another pavement restaurant. The conversation ranged over...etc..

Honfleur seriously challenges a man's endurance and a woman's restraint. If you are a tourist then Honfleur invites you to shop. And shopping is what we (Julie and Janet) did.

That evening, back in Deauville, every kind of exotic eating experience was on offer so long as it came from the sea - or, occasionally, from an American food factory. We checked a number of these places out, and in the end decided to go for a Chinese.

It was while we were settling down to eat in our number three Chinese restaurant (a mirror glass and lacquer affair) and getting really complicated about the ordering, that Phil's broken collar bone, which had been a problem right throughout the holiday, began to give him serious pain. The conversation covered the usual topics in ever more detail..

The plan: to have lunch in Amiens on our way back to Calais to catch the ferry

And what actually happened: Entering Amiens, we narrowly avoid getting done for speeding, then find no food and nowhere to park.

We weren't in a huge hurry to get on our way the following morning. By the time we had packed, had breakfast in the hotel bar and loaded up the bikes it was already late morning. The ride back to Calais, via Amiens and Abbeyville was on fast A roads most of the way and we expected to make good time. The plan was to stop off in Amiens for a meal.

Amiens, as it turned out was a waste of time. Thanks only to some drivers flashing at us from the other side of the road we avoided falling into a police radar trap. That was the second time that day. Once in Amiens itself we tried to find some parking space. There was not a lot. We tried to park close to the cathedral. But no sooner had we cut the engines than two cathedral-office ladies in finely knitted cardies popped their supremely well-coiffured heads out of a high window to advise us in friendly tones that parking here in the precincts would get us a ticket. They rubbed their fingers together vigorously to indicate that the fine would be a particularly heavy one. (Or they might have been asking for a bribe - I wasn't sure). We decided to ignore them, and made for an adjacent bar. The bar was pleasant enough, but wasn't serving food.

In the end we ate not at Amiens or at Abbeyville or at any other large town on the way, but at a rather ordinary workaday little place which was neither 'olde worlde' or Disneyesque, but was rather run down and shambolic, and whose name I have already forgotten. We followed a sign and found the restaurant. I went inside. They looked as though they were just closing as we arrived. I asked if they were still serving. They guy looked at me.

'How many?' he asked. 'For six,' I said. His smile broadened. 'For six,' he said, 'we are still open.' It was simple and civilised.

And the food was good.

The final plan: To ride back to Calais together to Calais.

What happened: Er, Phil...

We were spinning happily up the A16 towards Calais and making good time when out of the blue, Phil got the by now familiar, urge. He signalled his intentions, but by that time it was too late. His indicators were winking. The Diversion started to divert. Alan tried to interpose his not inconsiderable personal and mechanical bulk between Phil and the rapidly approaching turn-off, but It was a hopeless attempt. Phil was not to be diverted. Those carbon rings were proving too much of a powerful draw. Alan dropped back, and within seconds Phil had disappeared from view in the direction of Le Touquet. After a short discussion, Bill and Julie went after him on the Fazer, while Alan and I went on to the next 'Aire' to wait for them. Why did I have misgivings about this?

The next Aire was of the picnic table and khazi variety. We sat at the picnic table and made trips to the khazi, but there was no sign of the others. We were sitting almost at the summit of a breezy hilltop in the middle of a wind-farm. To the north our view was cut off by the hillside. To the south, the featureless countryside of Northern France rolled on endlessly towards the horizon. It's a sight like that, which makes you realise just how big France is - and somewhere out there in all that, we thought, was Phil: not a petrol station, or even a human being in sight, as far as the eye could see. After an hour we decided to abandon the windfarm and any hope of meeting up with the others, and go on to Calais. We reckoned that when the others failed to find us, they would do the same. There was no point in us all missing the ferry. Alan had to go to work the following day. The only possible problem with this plan was that Alan was carrying Phil’s rucksack on his bike. Were his ferry tickets in it?

At the ferry terminal we stopped to search the rucksack. It was an unpleasant few minutes, for though it didn't contain any tickets (which was a relief) it was stuffed to the gunnells with a week's worth of Phil's dirty washing. As we were stuffing his dirty underwear back into the pack, a tall spindly girl in dreadlocks approached us and asked if we had a map of the UK. She wanted to know the best way from Dover to London on foot. This was a ploy: what she was angling for was a free ride across to the U.K. Eventually she made this clear by asking if we had a spare 'casque' (helmet). The ferry tickets are for the bike and do not specify the number of people it is carrying, and she'd seen my empty pillion.

We parked the bikes in the queue to the ferry and went for a pee. When we got back the other bikes had joined us. In fact, they'd got into Calais before us. While we were waiting for them at the 'Aire' by the windfarm, they had been waiting for us at a different 'Aire' further down the road - one with a petrol pump. Like us, they had decided to come on to the ferry terminal and wait.

The crossing was smooth and calm, but the weather wasn't. In mid-Channel we hit a terrific thunderstorm. Lightning flashed around the ferry every few seconds while buckets of water poured down the windows. Julie sat bolt upright in her seat through most of it. Phil wandered off. His shoulder was really paining him now, the left side had dropped very noticeably.

The sort of Plan: to sort of ride back to Thurrock together

What actually happened: I watched the little red lights disappear into the distance.

It was raining as we came off the ferry, cold, dismal, English rain. We fuelled up and I watched in amazement as two tall, stringy girls behind the cash desk gave a truly embarrassing display of resentment and bad temper. I hadn't seen anything so pathetic in years. A couple of well-dressed blokes in their twenties had tried to buy cigarettes from them, and struggled to understand how to pass money under the security window. The blokes were Slavic-looking and I guessed this was all being fuelled by the racial tensions that were igniting bar stools all along the south coast. Whatever was going on, the girl's peevish behaviour was stupid beyond belief. I sighed inwardly. We were back home, back in the real world. The holiday was over.

I was tired and vague and no longer felt any urge to hurry. I let Bill and Phil's taillights disappear up the dark slope ahead of me without making any effort at all to keep up with them. Alan realizing what was happening overtook me and disappeared too. I was on my own. I didn't really want to get separated from the others, not now, but I was in the mood for dawdling and in truth, I was relieved to have a little time to myself - to ride my own ride. The weather appeared to improve as I rode north, but never really cleared. And then, all of a sudden, and with no warning, an almighty storm broke overhead and water fell out of the sky in sheets.

It was a deluge. I couldn't see a bloody thing. Taillights blurred until they were just strings of red that spun out right across the road. My visor was running like the Victoria Falls.

Many years ago I had a good friend, Mike, who had binned his bike in circumstances similar to these. The poor guy broke his neck. The medics had managed to fix him up so that he could walk again. But his main problem after that was that every time he had an orgasm, he had a massive nosebleed to go with it. He was a good-looking bloke, and he still had loads of girlfriends - but they never stayed for long. I squinnied harder out into the night and tried not to think about my possible fate.

Meeting up again at the services was a muted affair. We were tired and ready for bed. At the very end of the holiday we all reckoned we'd had a good time. A few jokes were still going round, but there was just a hint of gloom hovering over some of the remaining conversation. Partings in the car park were brief. I looked at my odometer just before pulling out. From Thurrock to Thurrock we had ridden 680 miles. Not a huge distance for a five-day biking holiday - riding to Dover and back would have taken up a fifth of that. But if you had gathered together all the noodles we'd eaten, and laid them end to end, they would probably have covered the same distance. I think we can safely say, from that point of view alone, that the holiday had been a success.