As we crawled along bumper-to-bumper on the Paris peripherique, I thought I might have to rewrite a whole section of my book, the part where I rave about how great the French roads are and what a pleasure it is to drive in France.

In Against The Current, I talked about near-empty roads, excellent autoroutes (motorways) - the surfaces if which are superb and where the traffic flows smoothly - and generally polite drivers wherever you go.

But maybe I should have driven Paris's peripherique sooner, and some of the French capital's outer approach roads, because this latest experience proved tortuous in the extreme.

We were driving from Migennes to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to drop Liz off for her flight out last week. The journey started well enough, first of all on a D road - usually minor and rural - then an N road, a Route Nationale - still smooth and pleasant - and finally onto the A6 autoroute where we swept towards Paris at a rate of knots. It was not to last.

The speed limits on French roads generally fall into three categories: 90 kph on the open roads that aren't dual carriageways or non-tolled autoroutes, 110 kph if they are, and on the tolled autoroutes the limit is 130 kph (reducing to 110 in bad weather). And more often than not the road conditions and the driving are superb.

Just like anywhere else in the world you'll always be overtaken no matter what speed you're doing, and many's the time a Porsche, Mercedes or Beemer has shot past us on the outside lane of the autoroute. Even some scooter riders zoom by at what must be about 150 kph. Faster than a Farage heading for the next Exit.

But not as we reached the outskirts of Paris (which, given it's the home of the Can-Can I always want to call the 'underskirts'), where the traffic grew heavy, the speeds dropped, and congestion increased. Every on-ramp created a new challenge, while last-minute lane-changing as we neared exits also caused the heart to head for the mouth, but that's because I was the one doing a lot of last-minute lane changing.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any slower, we got on the peripherique. Well, I've already ranted in these blogs about the dreadful M25, that circular car park around London, and this was no better, except the sun was shining and it was about 30 degrees. We inched, we crawled, we paused, we started, we paused again; you get the picture.

Aeroplanes roared overhead; we watched them through the Rav's sunroof (called, for some reason by Toyota, a 'moonroof'; the creative possibilities are mind-boggling!) and I said to Liz, 'I don't suppose they're taking off from CDG are they?'

'Er, no,' she said, checking the navigation device. 'We've still got 45 minutes to go. That must be Orly.'

I'd rather have been early at Orly, I thought to myself. But then our destination was named after the late Charles de Gaulle, so...

The only traffic making any progress were motorcycles and scooters, which lane-split between the two outer lanes, each coming within scant centimetres of taking out our wing mirrors as they roared past. Being a rider myself I do always try and give them room, which they appreciate. I know this because they stick a leg out.

It's true. While in the UK an appreciative motorcyclist will usually lift a hand from their handgrip by way of acknowledgement, here in France - and maybe all of Europe for all I know - they stick a leg out. It looks comical. But anyway, we were shown more than a few ankles as we parked our way towards the ever-distant CDG.

We got there in the end of course - you always do - but we were glad we'd given ourselves a generous safety-net of time, having learned our lesson the hard way two weeks previously in England when we missed our ferry to France. Don't get me started.

Liz and I said our farewells in Terminal 2's departures concourse, and I began the long drive back to the boat. But this time I set the TomTom to avoid all the autoroutes and instructed it to stick to N and D roads.

It took me almost two hours longer because of the slower limits, and the numerous towns and villages, but having analysed the DNA of French roads, I think 'D' stands for Decongested and 'N' for Nice. 'A' roads near Paris are just Awful.