Some time mid-afternoon, we cornered a mountain to the sound of an accordion. Bob Dylan was good company. The sparse greenery formed a low-level haze that separated mud from rock and the heat coming off the road added to the effect. We'd been dribbling through villages all morning and hadn't been out of third gear in a few hours. The tank was getting empty and so were we, so we were on the lookout for a gulp-n-blow, lube-n-tune kind of arrangement.

Somewhere between eating the last bag of porridge oats and siphoning the last drops from the water bottle, we'd lost track of our directions. As we cleared the mountain, we found ourselves on another one of those roads that never quits, and it didn't look like it was going to offer any solutions.

Somehow, we'd had the energy to talk non-stop since breakfast, and even with drought setting in, we still seemed to have a lot to say. I swapped out Dylan for something that better matched the vibe, and as we cruised the soft bumps of a surprisingly well maintained road (considering how few people seemed to use it), a solid hip hop rhythm began setting our minds up for speed and Simon punched the gas a little harder than usual, trimming minutes off the countdown to our next break.

The windows were all down and the car was still hot, even at speed. The sun was unforgiving but we were getting used to it. Once we got past the bumps, the road opened up and we took it for granted to do the same. In twenty minutes, we were slowing to a huge roundabout that must have had fifteen exits. One of them apparently sounded familiar, and we went round a second time to pull off at the exit we'd just missed.

I studied Simon's face as he tried to make a picture out of the memories of a previous family trip. "Yeeaaahhh... This is it." As we entered a car park, we found out why the roads were so empty; everyone was here at some kind of theme park. Game for a laugh, I agreed to the bewildering entry price and forked over another fiver for half a liter of water that could well have come from a tap.

Having no idea what to expect, I followed Simon's lead and we guided ourselves on a discovery tour of what I still think of as some kind of sterile retirement home with lawn ornaments. An hour into our tour, we were still unable to find anything about it that warranted the ticket price, but on a day like that, you're just happy to be alive and outside. We went with that.

We wandered some more, eventually coming up on a kids' playground. With no reason not to, we indulged ourselves for a few minutes until the laughs wore off, and Simon spun me in some sort of washing machine thing until I begged him to stop.

In the distance was some kind of castle that looked like it was constructed from plastic pipes, and we took off in that direction to take a closer look. The walkway leading to it was long enough that we gave in to hunger and turned back; something I still regret to this day. Some time later, we would return to check it out, but that time never came, and we moved on after filling ourselves again and seeing out the afternoon in the park we'd spent a month's wages entering.

As dusk stole the clarity from distant objects and gave us a lesson in cinematic lighting, we peeled off onto the highway to see about sleeping arrangements.

Mountain road.

The bridge that wouldn't quit, Futuroscope.

Spinning me round.