Kieran has recently uploaded photos from a road trip he and I took in the summer of 2004, which has brought back memories of a very enjoyable adventure.

We were going to do an aid convoy but for various reasons it never happened. However we had the two weeks booked off and so decided to just follow our noses to the south of Europe, with Monaco and Andorra as vague destinations in mind.

Our plans never quite worked out, though, and we ended up turning left in the north of France and “doing” Belgium and the Netherlands. And it was fun. Highlights included having lunch with the chief of traffic and public order of the Paris police, hanging out with a pile of Finns, watching Euro 2004 in pubs festooned with orange, and getting adopted by the youth wing of the Dutch Socialist Party. As you do.

Interesting things always seem to happen when Kieran and and I go places. I must tell you, for example, about our major diplomatic incident at the Greece-Macedonia border in 1999 en route to Kosova. It involved Robin Cook, Radio Scotland, and a police escort.

But that, and the whole convoy, is a story for another day.