I then felt that familiar feeling. A pooh was brewing.

The air was hot and full of the summer smells that are kept out by the cars capsule and you only notice when cycling or biking. I had had a lovely coq au vin at an isolated Routiers and may have overdone the sauce. I started looking for a suitable place to stop.

Unfortunately the countryside was totally flat and open. There was not a tree or hedge to be seen so I had no alternative but to press on hoping the desire would fade. However if there was one country where it would be OK to crap by the side of the road without any pretence of hiding away it would be in France .

A few years ago I was driving around the M25 towards the M1 needing a wee. The traffic had been the usual stop start so by the time I saw the junction board I was truly desperate. I pulled off onto the hard shoulder and with immense relief started to relax. As the satisfied glow flowed from me it was replaced by another, less comfortable feeling, one that I was not alone. I looked around and saw a bloke watching me.

'Oh Oh' I thought, I then noticed the pretty blue lights on the top of his car.

'When you've finished'.

My moment was ruined.

'You have just committed two offences, stopping on a motorway and exposing yourself in public.'

I expressed friendly amazement and countered with having been living in France and being able to pee anywhere at any time at all. Luckily he laughed so I knew I wouldn't be booked.

The law required me to drive off the motorway, to the nearest services or wee in my trousers.

I thought a pooh in a field would be an appropriate riposte to the UK laws and had now reached a pine woods. I stopped at a track and looked for a suitable spot.

Taking my Andrex I squatted behind some tree trunks and leaned against them making sure I didn't drop one in my trousers.

Experience is everything. Squatting with my trousers round my ankles, I tried not to fall over. This was not something I was used to.

My mission accomplished, I stood up and, as I did so, my eye was caught by a movement close by.

A big beetle was scampering through the leaves and twigs in a steady, determined sort of way. All of a sudden I could hear David Attenborough and David Bellamy commentating on the scene as the beetle clambered over, around and under everything in his path. I'm sure it was a boy beetle.

He just kept on his steady course, pushing forever onwards.

What a perfect illustration of why resigning my job to go biking was the right thing to do. I'd never witness nature at such close hand at home having little reason to crap by the side of the road.

Then I realised where he was going. He was going directly underneath me towards a big pile of pooh. I started to laugh and nearly lost my balance. As I stood up I turned to see what he was doing.

Blind beetle bliss.

All I could see were his fat body and six legs. His head was deeply buried in my pooh.