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1 butteriness (no margarine-based croissants for me)

2 a good balance of caramelised sweetness and bready savoury notes

3 a crisp base

4 a slightly damp middle – squidgy but not doughy

In the text that follows, all scores are out of 10: 1–4 denotes a poor croissant not even worth finishing (a croissant contains about 260kcal); 5–7 as a mediocre-to-decent example not worth complaining about and 8+ as a good croissant worth repeating immediately if time permits.

It’s a satisfyingly neat loop around the country, but one, I note, that covers an awful lot of ground. A cursory google turns up the terrifying fact that France is the largest country in Western Europe, a whopping 27 times the size of Wales. Distances are vast – it looks like it might take me at least three days to cycle across Brittany alone.

Unfortunately, I have a day job as a weekly columnist, and a mortgage to pay, to say nothing of a terrier with a truly prodigious appetite; I can’t afford to dawdle around this place like a tourist – I need to be a Tourist. So like the boys in Lycra,† I’ll need the odd lift. Until quite recently I’d assumed the Tour de France actually rode around France, but they don’t; they get on team coaches and doze their way to the next starting line. Me, I’m going to let the train take the strain.