THERE IS a happy moment in life when you realise two things:

= That nearly everybody in the world is younger

= And that they have to go to work and you don't.

Go on, admit it: there's a guilty pleasure in riding by people in suits looking anxiously at their watch.

What brings this on is that my elder daughter decided that she and her family, who live in England, would spend a week here in France at a holiday centre north of Bordeaux. Precisely, they would be at the tip of the Médoc peninsula, which is a wine-growing area in which a fancy-dress marathon passes through one vineyard after another and offers free wine to those who think they can both drink it and survive 42km anywhere near upright.

That's them at the top of the page.

The aim of the week by the sea was far from running a marathon, in fancy dress or otherwise. It was to bask in the sun and then (insert happy gloating sound here) go back to work afterwards.

For us, living 300km or more to the south-east, it was a chance to spend our days riding to see them. Much of which I am about to recount.