To the Alps and back

Mankind has always had a hankering to head for the hills. No doubt psychologists and historians would be able to give us a decent explanation why this is so. We don't need one, except to know that travel is good

- Paul Smith

Saturday

I am waiting in line at the P&O Dover ferry terminal. I have just filled up at Tesco after riding down from Derby, via London, on one tankful. My Honda Crossrunner is the only bike in sight. I'm called forward in front of the cars and caravans and get a spot right at the bow ready for a quick exit on the other side of the channel. After a pleasant 90 minutes relaxing in the lounge, we dock at Calais and I am first off.

How Calais has changed since I came here on a Honda 125 as a student teaching English in Lille in the 1970s. No messing with cobbled docksides and hidden railway tracks that can grab your front wheel in a heartbeat - it's now straight out and on to the motorway. It's as if Calais doesn't want you to stop too long to admire all the barbed wire, movement sensors and other security paraphernalia - or is it that they are in cahoots with the people that run the toll motorways and want to get you into their hands as soon as possible?

Northern France can seem bleak and featureless, and it is easy to rush through it to get on to warmer and more interesting places, but this is a place with a hidden heart of gold, not to mention that's it's also the final resting place of so many, mainly young men, killed in the muddy horrors of First World War battles. In fact, the motorway I'm on passes within a few miles of two commonwealth war graves, one at Lapugnoy where my wife's great uncle, 2nd Lt George Morrison (10th Scottish Rifles), is buried, and another at Péronne where my great uncle Sgt Edwin Smith (Sherwood Foresters) lies in a cemetery overlooking lush meadows that lead down to the Somme. Rudyard Kipling's son (played by Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe in the film 'My Son Jack') is buried just a few miles away in Loos near Béthune.