My family along with many others went to France to watch the Castleford v Catalan game held in April. The least said about the game the better I think, but whilst we were there we had a wonderful time with glorious weather and enjoyed visiting seaside towns like Collioure and Canet.

In true style of the independent traveller things did go wrong. We booked our transfers from the Airport and to the game in Carcassonne with Catalan Travel. We arrived at the airport, but there was no coach to meet us so we travelled by taxi. On the day of the game a 53 seat coach turned up for about 70 passengers and the coach was one hour late arriving to take us back to the airport. However, I consider myself lucky, those that booked the full package with Catalan travel were telephoned the day before and told they would not be going at all due to technical problems with the aircraft.

My Castleford shirt was somehow not packed in my suitcase so amongst the sea of gold and white at the match was someone wearing a black t-shirt!

We were put on a coach to Toulouse to fly home from there, but en route the sun roof on the coach kept blowing off and the men on the coach had to operate a rota system standing up and holding the sunroof down.

One of the striking things you see now is how many people in France smoke - more do than don’t even in restaurants when they are eating. I think eventually we will become a fitter nation than they are. It is surprising, whether you agree with smoking bans or not, how out of place it seemed.