‘He daren't take that heap of junk to a garage,’ Wolf said as we moved off, ‘If he did, he’d be off the road and the bus confiscated, like as not’. It was lucky I never go anywhere without maps, they may be expensive, but I regard them as essential. The others were not blessed with such foresight, and although they were all much faster than we were, due to Wolf’s sight and my weight, we kept coming across little lost groups of them. That was until we left the main coastal route and struck inland through byways, along tiny country lanes through quiet, peaceful countryside dotted with apple orchards, where we saw hardly a soul except pretty, brown-spotted cows and curious sheep. 

Once, heading uphill to a T-junction, we saw Fat Colin’s bus pass the top of the road, and thanked our protective gods that we were too far back for him to see us!

Someone asked, surely he had a spare? Why hadn’t he fitted it? Seemed he had been unable to remove the wheel. We exchanged glances. We knew what that meant. Nuts rusted on. Regularly maintained obviously meant ‘frequently breaks down’. The thing was ONLY maintained when something went wrong. Which it did on a daily basis. Now we knew why he spent the week there. It was the only guarantee the bus would be there to take us back.

‘It needs a special kind of spanner,’ he told us, ‘I’ve got the bar staff on red alert, Francois’s very good, I’m sure he’ll come up with something before long’. 

Ernest risked his wrath by asking if Colin didn’t have some kind of policy that meant he could get a mechanic out to fix it. ‘It would take a very special kind of mechanic to fix my bus,’ he beamed. 

I’m afraid I couldn’t resist it. ‘Yes, he would have to be a Time Traveller, wouldn’t he?’ I said.

These pre-dinner gatherings were getting less well attended, and it was noticeable that we were all arriving at them later and later. This did not work with Colin, he insisted on a ten minute chat to bring us up to date with the bus’s progress before we went in to dinner. The ten minutes started from the time the last one arrived, so there was no getting out of it, other than being extremely rude, and that day was coming dangerously close.

Wolf, enraged at his insistence that the steak was ‘the tenderest he had eaten, and he would like to know where WE all ate back home that we were so choosy......’ asked him if he had donated his old tyre for the meal?

Feeling the tide was turning against him, Fat Colin fell silent, turning to the wine for consolation. This came free with the meal, and was no doubt reflected in the price of our accommodation. 

Later, Wolf and I went in search of aspirin for my headache, and were directed to the bar, as the only place still open. There was Fat Colin, drinking alone. In spite of our recent sarcasm, his face lit up to see us, but quickly extinguished itself when he realised we were not there to drink.

By Day 3 I had had enough of Colin and suggested to Wolf that we sit at another table instead of with the group. Unfortunately my back was to them, so I missed the start of what occurred next. All I knew was that Fat Colin suddenly shot past us like a projectile, sprinted the length of the room, wrenched open the French windows and disappeared into some bushes. I thought he had spotted someone with the right size spanner, but no, the bushes parted, and there he was heaving up in them. When he returned, white-faced, he and Esmerelda disappeared to their quarters, leaving some very grim faces at the breakfast table.

‘When ah saw that bus,’ he said, ‘ah thowt worrisit? Ah said to im, it’s nuthn like Bolerooa mon! Yer knooa worri said? E said, ‘did onyone tellyer tharrit wor?’ Ah said, ‘nooa, tha diden’. Then he said, ‘ah tooald ya it worra 1986 Mercedes’ an ah said, ‘aye, but tha diden tell us it wor carbon dated!

Ernest and his wife Muriel were all for reporting him to the Cyclists’ Touring Club when we got back - why, what had they got to do with it? I asked.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Muriel said, ‘he goes round to CTC events advertising his business. I’m going to get that stopped! It’s sheer misrepresentation what he’s doing’.

Later, Esmerelda issued a statement purporting to explain what happened at breakfast. Colin, it seemed, had a nosebleed in the night and swallowed a lot of blood. This was the red stuff he was sicking up in the bushes. Definitely not a surfeit of red wine. Oddly, the fact that they issued a coverup I found more worrying than the occurrence itself. It was like Fat Colin having a press office.

As it was raining heavily, Wolf and I made our way to the sports hall for the morning, to play table tennis. How do you play table tennis with a blind person? Well, you have to have the table right in the middle of the floor with a good deal of space around it, and you have to be prepared to run a long way fetching the ball. However it’s worth it to see the grin on his face as he whams the ball way out of reach, and all that running and bending is good for the figure. 

After a while I went to the toilet and when I came back Wolf had found his way into a cupboard where the archery equipment was kept. We fully explored all the possibilities of that, made a lot of holes in the woodwork, and returned to the main building to find Fat Colin had recovered enough to arrange lunch. We declined, having had enough of mechanical bulletins.

"Yes, but they said they would rather get lunch in Agon," he explained.

‘They’re not walking there!’ I said. It was at least two miles.

‘Apparently,’ shrugged Colin.

‘They must be some of those ‘fixed’ people.’ said Wolfram, ‘have to have their meals on time’. 

And we both knew why they didn't want lunch there. Same reason we were going to our room to eat the health food crunch, nuts, dates and rice crackers we had packed for the journey and not entirely eaten.

What we didn’t know, but found out later, was that they had been misguided enough to ask Fat Colin if it was possible to walk to Agon along the beach!

Colin dropped us at a roadhouse a mile or two from the Mont, so we could ‘stretch our legs’, but I expect he and Esmerelda had some nefarious business of their own in the area. It immediately became apparent that the reason Wolf wanted to stay on the bus was because he had run out of tobacco. This proved unbelievably difficult to get, there being only large hotels at the approach to the pavement going out to the Mont, none of which sold tabac. In the end we had to cycle four miles inland to the nearest town, where things were more normal. An enchanting little creperie caught my eye, and I was hungry, so we stayed an hour or so over an excellent lunch, and didn't have that much time for the Mont after all.

It was an amazing sight, sticking up out of the sea at the end of the pavement that drove straight as an arrow towards it. It wasn’t until we got nearer that we realised it wasn’t just a town perched on a rock, that at least half of it was occupied by the massive Abbey. By now the others had arrived, fuming at some wrong directions Fat Colin had given them. They weren’t too pleased to be stopped halfway by the Abbey gateway, and they didn't like the entrance fee. I didn't like it either, but as Wolf said, it’s not as if we’ll ever be here again to think about it, so we should do it while we have the chance. An apt motto for life, really.

Having the morning free, we decided to stay close to home and visit some of the villages we hadn’t seen. We very much liked the look of a creperie in an old forge not far from the hotel, and planned to have a quick lunch there on the way back. That was before we ran into the country market in the next town. They had everything, even live crabs writhing in pots. They were not moving when we first walked up, and I asked ‘Sont-ils mort, Madame?’ ‘Mais non, Madame,’ she replied, poking them with a stick and making the poor things jump.

Among the many craft stalls was one selling honey and honey products. I bought candles in delicately shaped beeswax, some candle-shaped with a bee and flowers on the sides, others shaped like small elephants. I love ironmongers shops, there was one down a side street, and I bought some useful knives, and pea, bean and gherkin seed to grow back home. We couldn’t resist the charcuterie and the boulangerie, and loaded the bikes with bread, cakes and cooked meats, which we ate in a small orchard beneath the cider apple trees, still in flower in May, and I picked roots of white flowered and rosy red flowered comfrey to add to the collection I am building.

We were too full to eat at the creperie, but we went in and had superb hot coffee - first of the holiday! - in front of a roaring fire. This used up our remaining francs and seemed a fitting end to the trip.