Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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Is it still possible, I wonder, to find roadside places full of what the redoubtable Fanny Cradock described as ‘heavily tattooed, burly camion drivers … where the soap is attached to a string in the communal loo and the tablecloths may be of paper, but where an excellent five-course meal can be found for well under a pound’? Will I eat better in France than I would at home, and come back two stone heavier, with incipient scurvy?

My tour will have several, not insignificant diversions from its more famous namesake. For a start, as described above in luxuriant detail, my route is going to be based solely around the greatest hits of French cuisine, rather than its landscapes and local politics. Secondly, though there will be a rag-tag peloton for the most scenic bits, I’ll be mostly on my own, as it seems most of my friends, very inconsiderately, have proper jobs that preclude going away for five weeks. Thirdly, I’m going to have to lug everything with me, including a tent and sleeping bag, to leave me more to spend on food (pro teams sleep in hotels where they don’t even carry their bags upstairs themselves). And lastly … I’m a 35-year-old food writer who spends most of her working week testing recipes – and when I say testing, I mean eating them all up and licking the plate while the dog looks on with jealous eyes. Tour riders start off with about 4–5 per cent body fat. I suspect mine, though mercilessly unmeasured, is more akin to a pot of clotted cream.