Pardon moi! (Dieppe to the Seine)

Absent ski trips, that don't count (hello faux authentic tourist trap mountain villages!), the last time I visited France properly, I was very young.

It was when it was still cheaper to drive, which will give you a wincing recollection of the early 90's blissfully low fuel costs as well as the inaccessibly expensive air fares of the time for the average family looking to get away from Britain.

And it is odd what you can bring to mind when looking back.

I can distinctly recall the way my (seemingly ever) pale skin stuck to the hot, caramel leather seats of my parents car. I can remember the feeling of the hours stretching on forever as we journeyed to our destination, all the while listening to my Dad's latest music album obsession; Paul McCartney, Flowers in the Dirt (Ou Est Le Soleil!) and I vaguely remember a giant bicycle with something crazy like 6 seats and a turning circle to rival a double decker.

Admittedly I don't know if all this is one holiday or an amalgamation of various childhood memories. Regardless, my recollection of France is more focussed around fuzzy singular things that happened; the heartache of my brother falling off a bike, devouring Ferrero Rochers, endless white sandy beaches that blistered your feet upon contact. Rather than detailed scenery, culture or anything remotely sophisticated enough to have given an impression I could use as a base for any expectations as an adult.

As one can imagine, I was thinking (totally illogically) that it would be instantly summertime once our bikes hit European tarmac, because HOLIDAY right? Oh my goodness, I could not have been more wrong. Statistically and this is a fact(!), February is the driest month of the year in France. Well. I'm unsure if that is entirely true this year, because goodness me....I never thought I would come to realise what it is to crave dry underwear so much. The hydrostatic head on my (kids) waterproof trousers is pretty low really, but I was hoping that with December and January behind us, we'd be looking at fresh mornings and budding daffodils maybe some French dude singing uplifting songs whilst I cycled past with a baguette full of brie and smile as wide as the horizon.

France is cold. It's really wet too. We had to have two emergency hotel stops because the temperature dipped below the comfort rating on the sleeping bags and worse still, my fleece liner was yet to be picked up, we were grabbing it in Paris!

As much as I want to say I was sad to find us warm and dry, inside, with running (precious hot) water and a night of sleeping just in bedsheets as opposed to every item of clothing we brought on the trip: I was pretty glad. The first time was a basic room, but I was no less grateful, it's funny how your expectations lower when the alternative is the vague distant possibility of losing a finger to frostbite or eaking out eating a packet of fries at a 24hr McDonald's for four or five hours.

The second stop at a hotel however....saw us stumble upon something rather unexpected.

We had been rained on for two days, the temperature was dropping again only this time all our kit was wet. James could see my attempts at staying cheery were beginning to dampen along with my knickers and he could tell, unlike him, I found it hard to enjoy the ride when the rain splashes into your eyes, no matter if you lean back, forward, squint, use your hood, wear your hat, try to avoid puddles or just plow right through them. At times it's easier to accept that you will just become sodden, that it is an inevitability of the type of rain they get here. The small perk: with that understanding comes a slight delirious joy in occasionally walking into a deep puddle without waterproof shoes, simply because you are a law breaker, risk taker and have gone slightly mad from the lack of memory regarding a life with radiators or tumble dryers.

But I digress. James decided it was a good idea to take shelter for the night, so he found what looked to be a good deal: at this point we go for the cheapest we can find and once the room was booked on a phone with ever dwindling battery, we set to racing there for respite from the weather.

We went wrong twice on the way, so much so, the darkness began to set in and we started to frantically look for short cuts and abandoned the cycle route we had been on in order to arrive as soon as possible. By that point, we just wanted a rest; it had been the longest day on the bikes we had had and we were knackered.

So somewhat spurred on by the call of a warm bed, we pushed our bikes up one final monstrous hill and found ourselves at dusk, looking out upon a gorgeous panoramic view of a valley, the very one the Seine proudly carves it's way through.

Happily, just then, it stopped raining and we stood for a moment staring out at the twinkling street lights of the town's and villages below. It was kind of breath taking.

But the downhill that followed. Good gracious was it well earnt and gloried! We raced downwards, upon a road that I imagine you could quite conceivably see on a car advert somewhere; like a snake weaving one way and then the other, wide and smooth. It might be a driver's dream but I can confirm: it is more accurately a cyclist's Mecca!

And from there we passed through stunning villages, with quaint hole in the wall bars, boulangeries brimming with tarts and crunchy baguettes, fresh out the oven from the final bake of the day, the smell wafting into the streets as we rode past. And big, big houses, with imposing wrought iron gates and ivy growing up the walls, white shutters and chunky brass door handles. It was the France I had been waiting for. It was what I had thought it would be like. And it was, right there on a road we were never supposed to go down.

At the end of that day we were covered in mud, had hair plastered to our faces, the bikes were covered in dirt and my trainers squeaked from the sheer amount of water retained inside them. We looked like we had not seen a warm shower in a very long time.

And this is why we laughed, a lot when we arrived at the hotel or more specifically a humongous fancy gate, complete with intercom, that sat in front of a long manicured drive.

The shock of the day was them actually letting us in, though I assume they might have refrained had the intercom included a camera. It took quite a few minutes to get down the drive, we feared for a moment a terrible trick had been played on us and we were about to walk into a madman's country cabin and be chopped up for pig feed, but we round the corner and stood, dumbfounded.

It appeared we were staying in a very swanky château. Very posh indeed.

We couldn't stop laughing of course, we could not have looked less like we fitted in if we tried!

It was so far the best bargain we have ever had. The bed was big enough for three, the views of the grounds were just immense and the breakfast, that we didn't eat because it was €30 looked and smelled great!!

I guess it's true that good things come to those who wait!