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Both ferries and Eurostar require separate bike reservations – the latter may claim you’ll need to take the bike apart for travel, but quite often they don’t when you actually get there. Bear in mind that the place you’ll need to collect the bike from or drop it off at Paris’s Gare du Nord is so far down the left-hand side you’ll think you’ve gone wrong – follow signs to ‘Bagages Enregistrés Eurostar/Geoparts’. (Note that, at the moment at least, they only take bikes between London, Paris, Lille and Brussels.)

As I gaze out at the countryside through the steady stream of water running down the window, I’m reminded of an old joke from Robb’s book in which a visitor to Brittany demands of a passing infant, ‘Boy, tell me, does it always rain like this here?’ ‘I don’t know, sir,’ replies the child. ‘I’m only eight.’

It only gets worse as darkness falls, and thanks to the sea mist smothering Brest to its damp bosom, I end up seeing little of the city beyond my front wheel. The ‘apart-hotel’, the cheapest of my very few options for tonight, is clearly aimed at commercial travellers, perhaps staying a week or two, and its strip-lit corridors are full of the smells of cooking. When I ask if there’s a garage for my bike, the lady behind the desk shakes her head in apology, before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘Of course, you’re welcome to take it up to your room if you don’t mind that.’ I can’t believe I’ve heard right – really? She looks puzzled by my reaction and points out the lift as if I might be above hoiking him upstairs. I don’t need telling twice, and Eddy spends his evening in three-star comfort, propped against a trouser press. The French know how to treat a bike.