There's always been something special about being completely lost. In years gone, I've sought it with hunger. My first journey across France, in a small car, equipped with a few gas bottles, an army mess tin and a sleeping bag, I took off with my friend, Simon, to see how lost we could actually get. Our plan included learning only the most necessary phrases and having no other plan.

The first day off the boat was so bright and optimistic, as we discovered how clean Calais was, at least at the ferry port. We cruised in the direction we happened to be facing and drove until we were tired. That night, we were ready for anything. We pulled over in a clearing by the forest on the longest road we'd ever seen, having covered more than a hundred miles without a turn or a stop light. We sat on logs and heated up canned soup in the mess tin, musing on our newfound freedom - a welcome change in our already-monotonous lives.

As night closed in and the air cooled to a chill, we packed up our fire and skulked back to the car for a nap. I remember those hard seats with their 45-at-best sleeping angles. After what seemed like twenty minutes of discomfort, the sun burned my eyes, snatching me from my sleep. Simon was already outside, breathing forest air and soaking up the morning rays. I took a few minutes to compose myself before unzipping my bag and stepping out into the heat. It was quite a change.

When breakfast was done, we picked out some CDs for the next leg of our journey to nowhere and pulled out onto the busy road, eager to kick it off.

The ride was so alive with music, road noise, smells from the flowers and trees, scenery and spring optimism, we barely said a word until we slowed to enter a small town. It's when we come back to ourselves; the engine calms down and thoughts become a little more focused.

We stopped in a small parking lot outside a diner and headed inside for a coffee and a baguette, as we felt was only right. From the inside, the windows looked bigger, and the view did, too. Although we hadn't spoken much, we'd seen the same things along the way and it seemed like a good time to remark on the oil-drop sculpture and the tiny traffic lights in the villages we'd seen.

We ate slowly, savoring our non-specific itinerary, then wandered around for a few minutes while we waited for our coffee to cool enough to drink, before keenly hopping back in the car to see what else there was to find.

We'd made it as far as Paris by the time we'd started looking at road signs, and sadly, if predictably, it wasn't the highlight of our journey - we had taken to the road, after all, to escape the city, and this one was as big and stressful as any we'd known. Once we found our way out of it, having only briefly glimpsed the obvious things, we were back on the open road, grinning ear-to-ear and feeling full of adventure, heading for a place with no name.

Eiffel Tower from across the street.

A place with no name, somewhere in France.