Ile De Re: Chateaubriand (Saturday 17/06/2017).

Imagine a dream.

Perhaps you’re riding a horse through rolling countryside and beside you is a beautiful consort, comely of face and flaxen of hair.

You stop by a babbling brook and feed each other peeled grapes and a spatch-cocked swan or two. Your minstrel compliments your garters before launching into a lusty rendition of something melodic on his lute. The strains of his music drift through the glade and as the roosting songbirds chatter about you the forest tannoy crackles into life to advise that you have precisely 11 minutes to vacate the cabin and make your way to the car deck.

Brittany Ferries, I salute you. If the cross channel business dries up, Guantánamo Bay will always be hiring (cable ties, crocodile clips and car battery included).

If proof is required that much can be achieved in a very short period of time, with the right motivation, the children were roused, dressed, fed and strapped into their car seats by the time car deck five had disgorged most of its vehicular contents, with the exception of our row of cars of which we were second from the front.

Thankfully, we were holding up diffident Anglo-Saxons rather than our hot-blooded cousins. One or two apologetic nods were all that was required before we were on our way to passport control without the need to fend off a single tyre iron.

France is on high alert after recent terrorist attacks, as we later discovered. However, our passport control booth was operated by a lovely man who evidently spoke a dozen languages and took the time to humour the children who had unmistakably spent the last 15 minutes mashing chocolate brioche into their tiny round faces.

With the prospect of a second breakfast on offer before embarking across the parched miles of France’s Atlantic coastline, we drove 8 feet into the historic old town of St Malo before parking the car and insinuating ourselves into the front parlour of Monsieur François-René Chateaubriand (1768 to 1848).

Chateaubriand - Over Priced Steaks since 1768.

According to his plaque on the city wall he was known as ‘L’Enchanteur’. Despite a long and varied career as a writer, lover, diplomat, soldier and traveller, he was raised in abject poverty, owning only one castle at Château de Combourg, Brittany. It is an enduring travesty that he is remembered by most, merely for the inspirational culinary breakthrough of cutting his steak into big chunks.

Old François is long gone but his house, which is now the eponymous hotel just within the city walls, served ample quantities of strong coffee and croissant.

There appeared a barely detectable rictus to the smile of the kindly lady who was serving us, when, with a Francophile flourish, I gamely enquired as to whether she could bring me some 'preservatif' to enjoy with my croissant.

Thankfully no condoms materialised but an unlimited supply of black cherry conserve did, which the children began to smear on top of the now hardened layer of pre-disembarkation chocolate brioche.

He has such lovely table manners.

Everyone was happy.

Our delight only increased as a karmic display unfolded as we scoffed and slurped. A deeply tanned woman emerged from the hotel and blipped the alarm on her Bentley, whose muscular grille protruded from a line of cars parked on the cobbled forecourt adjoining the hotel.

As she approached her car, the perfect coiffeur sagged slightly, the shoulders slumped and the gentle breeze carried to us a fruity French exclamation that would have seen Francois blush. A moment later the Bentley emerged from beneath the tree where it was parked, its suspension groaning under an economically viable quantity of guano deposits.

Second breakfast finished, we briefly walked the city walls, dangled the children precariously from the elevated crenulations, and prepared ourselves to be gouged by the periodic peage tollbooths that dotted the route.

Sophie scanned the skies for Messerschmitt, seeming to have concluded, not unreasonably in my view,  that the tourist telescope was in fact an anti-aircraft gun.

Bandits at 12 o'clock.

The traffic thinned as we left Lower Normandy, the greenery faded to yellow as we passed Nantes and the picturesque interior of Payes De Loire. By the time we passed Poitiers in the Poitou-Charentes, the mercury was bumping up against 35°C and the air conditioning was single-handedly drowning the Maldives.

Partly in an active “no rush to be there” esprit d’aventure, and partly in a desperate effort to feed the children something other than brioche or camembert, we parted company with our old friend the A83, and formed a passionate but short lived relationship with her younger but better looking French sister the A87.

It took us to the heart of La Roche-Sur-Yon and into the welcoming arms one of France’s increasing population of Stoke-on-Trent emigres.

(Café) Cup was a Gallic outpost of Kath Kidsonesque proportions run by a delightful English lady (we didn’t catch a name but she seemed like a Maggie) in a former sex shop. Gone were the nipple clamps and passion truncheons, replaced by a tidal wave of designer doilies, hipster cookbooks and scrambled egg to die for.

Doily heaven since quarter past eleven...

Suitably refuelled and the imminent meltdown of the tiny imperators postponed if not actually prevented, we took Maggie’s recommendation and within 30 paces, discovered the town square, hosting a classic car show and a strangely pleasing display of animatronic wildlife operated by a combination of levers, buttons and wildly excited children.

Flamingos. Who is 'Os' and why is he on fire?

As the modular hippo plunged and the spot welded frogs sprayed cooling water on the quickly overheating offspring, a mounted bust of Napoleon gazed down impassively, wondering perhaps, how different things might have been.

Detour completed, we retraced our steps and found ourselves through La Rochelle and onto the elegant bridge that joins Ille De Re to the mainland.

€8 feels like a modest price to get onto the island and a further 15 km of Oyster beds, whitewashed houses and fields of poppies and sunflowers led us once again No. 4 Rue De La Place and the hospitality of the Pastors.

Pasta, Pineau des Charentes and the anticipation of re-experiencing last year’s invigorating slice of island life led us all to bed without the usual tears.

There may not have been any Messerschmitt but we downed a few Mosquitoes before slipping into well earned rest.