"Voulez-vous le filet de bœuf ou l’agneau?” asked Léa, our smartly dressed cheffe de rang in the dining room of the Hôtel de France in Mende. Choosing between beef and lamb would end up being one of the few decisions I’d have to make all fortnight. It was late June, and I was sitting, dazed from exhaustion, in the loveliest of restaurants with the best of company – my brothers Trevor and Chris – halfway through a fully supported 1,600km (1,000-mile) epic from the Atlantic coast to the French Riviera.
The three of us dining like this, basking in the woozy afterglow of an active day, made me nostalgic for our family holidays of the 1970s. Simpler times, when our parents would march or cycle us across large tracts of rural Wales or Scotland. Decisions, however small, are the architects of our destiny.
