Motorhomes have moved on since the days of the good old Bedford Dormobile.

Now if you want to take the kitchen sink on holiday you can, along with the shower, the bath, the fridge and the double oven.

I have never had as much fun as when I rolled a huge Motorhome the full length of France. I felt and was king of the road. I’d never seen so much view while driving, and when it came to taking a break the facilities behind me could provide anything from a coffee to a three course meal.

Strangely the size of the thing didn’t matter after a few mental adjustments. It was a pleasure to drive and fellow travellers seem to give a healthy respect to a mad Englishman trogging along in something not much smaller than an articulated lorry.

I’ve never been flashed so many times in my life, headlights I mean. Overtaking a long vehicle demands an unwritten rule that you flash your lights when the overtaker is past you and flash your hazards as a thank you to them. Rolling down L’Autoroute du Soleil (motorway of sunshine) I must have looked like a manic, mobile illuminations display. By the end of the fortnight I felt more French than a Frenchman and it was an effort to adapt to driving back on the left!

Modern Motorhomes have everything for fun at home or abroad. Many now have air conditioning as standard, cruise control means you could almost cook and drive (don’t try it), and a quick hook up to services on a camp site means you literally have got home from home.

I haven’t sampled an English park but cannot speak too highly of the French ones I stayed on. By the way, please can we learn a little from our foreign counterparts? Driving the full length of the country I often stayed at what we would call services. There they are called “l’airs”. Beautiful grassed areas with high standard café and restaurant facilities, wash rooms, spotlessly clean and hardly a Wimpeys in sight.

My point? This is the largest country geographically in Europe with miles of autoroutes and roads. Why do we have to come home to potholes and curly motorway sandwiches which cost a fortune?

Motorhomes are great for Third Agers to escape to the open road and keep their home comforts. One thing I would advise though is, if you cycle, take a bike. After you have enjoyed a pre-dinner drink there is nothing more annoying than to have to drive your whole home to the local bistro and take up 12 parking spaces!

I am surprised no one has yet, to my knowledge, designed an articulated Motorhome so that you can unhook and leave the living area behind. Perhaps they have, and, yes, I have heard of caravans!

Having slept in the home for one night in Dover waiting for the ferry I was initially apprehensive. I soon learned that one is expected to put a bucket under the waste pipe and empty it periodically. I was eternally grateful it was the sink waste which washed down the street and nothing else.

Two nights later, drinking red wine under the stars at Bonnieux all my worries had disappeared. It was a frosty evening in mid-May but the beds were extremely comfortable, or was it the wine?

I awoke to blue skies and warm sunshine, the smell of ripe cherries drifting through the door. The camp owner arrived and gave me a basket.

I asked what it was for and he invited me to pick as many cherries as I wished each day of my stay. I could have stayed forever!

Graham Smith for Third Age.