Michael

La Rochelle was disappointing. There was no Monsieur Dupont for starters. And, bearing in mind the undertaking ahead of us, we got straight on with it. We arrived there at about six in the evening and started walking. It was at this time that Karim revolutionised our baggage, by starting to wear his small bag on his front instead of the back. This was the best thing that had ever happened to us - we were balanced. It was still heavy of course, but it meant we could walk without having to be bent over in a manner that would only really be socially acceptable in prison showers.

We found a road sign to Bordeaux and started the journey. The first hour or so was fine - we sang our way quite happily through American Pie, I Love You Baby and You've Lost That Loving Feeling.

By about eight o'clock, we had found our way onto the motorway. There was no pavement. By nine o'clock it was starting to get dark. We stopped off at a service station and went to McDonalds. While there, we threw away many of our possessions. The Lord Of The Rings had to go - one just couldn't walk 180KM with Tolkien's finest works in all their glory strapped to one's back. The girl clearing our table spoke four languages - French, English, German and Spanish. And she worked in McDonalds. I gave her Lord Of The Rings for her trouble. Some British holiday maker gave us a look at his map, and advised us on the finer points of walking to Bordeaux ("Don't bloody do it").

So we set off again. And it was getting darker still. And there was still no pavement. And we noticed what we probably should have noticed before but didn't - there were no streetlights.

Now at this point it would be fair to ask why two apparently intelligent men carried on walking down a major French road, with no pavement, no streetlights, in the dark, and in a place where you could pretty much guarantee that nobody could drive to save their lives. There is no answer to that question, so we'd better just move on.

By two o'clock in the morning we were tired, aching, and our nerves were pretty much shot to s***. The neon light we saw up ahead was getting closer, but not quickly enough. I spent my time fantasising about what it would be. I ended up deciding that it would be just like the Titty Twister bar in From Dusk Till Dawn, up to and not including the moment where all the dancing girls turned into vampires.

It turned out to be a twenty four hour trucker's cafe, which under the circumstances was like the metaphorical oasis in the desert. Food wise, I had a flan (I thought it was a quiche, but when I pointed at it to the woman and said 'quiche', she shook her head, said 'flan', and then assumed I wouldn't want it. I thought about explaining to her that I didn't know the difference between a flan and a quiche, but thought better of it. I just waited a few minutes and said 'flan') that I had bought in La Rochelle, dropped in the road, and then put back in it's box, stubbornly declaring that it was still edible. Drinks wise, we had thrown away the last of the cheap wine and were left with warm water.

The place was nice enough, and we got a couple of drinks and rested our aching feet. In fact things were looking great, until the truckers in there noticed that we were English. This caused more amusement than I can explain. One of them in particular decided to adopt us, and practised his English on us. His name was Michael, and he told us (seven times) that he was half Spanish, half French, and spent a lot of time driving in England. He also told us about his daughter about twelve times, in a manner that suggested he murdered women, rolled them up in carpets, and threw them into the ditches by the roadside without so much as slowing down his 18 wheeler.

We humoured him as much as our frail patience would allow. After about an hour, just when we were really seeing getting back on the motorway as the safest option, he started playfully referring to us as 'English w***ers'. This is a phenomenon that I have noticed several times since. A foreign person would call us a w***er and then laugh as if he was the funniest person in the world.

But here's the rub - when I called him a stupid French tosser, he didn't seem to get the joke.

Either way, we actually welcomed starting to walk again. Although we did s*** ourselves whenever we'd hear a lorry approaching.

By morning, we were approaching a small town called Rochfort. We had done well - it meant that we had nearly walked 30KM overnight. We were, quite rightly, rather pleased with ourselves. But we were also bloody knackered.

We had to wait until the sun came up before we could even think about finding somewhere to sleep. When it did, we started looking. At first, we found this very odd military base, that was less than welcoming. Then we found a graveyard, which did the trick. We camped down under a tree. It wasn't an old graveyard, it was a new job. New graveyards just aren't scary like they used to be. It's all nice gravel and marble headstones. Hardly the kind of place you can imagine the dead rising from.

It wasn't until we were half asleep that we realised it was now 7:30 AM on Saturday night. Which really meant it was 7:30AM on Sunday morning. It occurred to us that perhaps we could have picked a better day to sleep in a graveyard opposite a church. But, after literally moments of thinking about it, we decide to sod it. We slept.

Woke up at lunchtime and had a team talk. This walking lark was all very well and good, but there were one of two problems with it. Firstly, it was too dangerous to walk at night. We had established that quite successfully the night before. But it was too bloody hot to walk during the day. Besides, we were both now sporting blisters that were - somehow - larger than our feet.

So, after much soul searching and explanations that made it sound like we weren't giving up, we gave up.

But we weren't completely giving in. We weren't thinking about catching a train, or a bus, or anything of the sort.

We were going to hitchhike.

Now, I suppose there are probably a few different ways of hitchhiking. The main one seems to be standing on the side of the road holding a piece of cardboard. Not bad, we thought, and definitely somewhere to start. Although we didn't have any cardboard, we did have a paper plate and a black marker pen. Seconds later we were equipped with a sign that read "SUD (SOUTH)". Then we just had to find the location. We picked a road near the McDonalds we had found for breakfast - quite a few cars and close enough to the Golden Arches so we wouldn't starve to death.

And then we started to hitch. The first car stopped within ten minutes, but he wasn't going our way as it turned out. Still, this gave us the confidence we needed to carry on. After a while we got bored of merely standing there. So we started to dance. At first Karim danced while I sang and clapped him a rhythm, then I had a go. Then, we both did it.

It wasn't until five hours later that we realised our mistake and gave up.

There will be French motorists tickling their sides laughing for a long time to come at the memory of two English backpackers at the roadside, arm in arm, doing the Can-Can, singing "Do A Little Dance", one with his thumb stuck out, the other holding a paper plate with South scrawled on it.

On a road leading north.