Today, in my role as your local restaurant solutions operative, I am going to provide an answer to the most irksome of modern lunching problems, to whit: how do you break a cross-country drive with a nice meal in a pub without (a) being done for drink-driving after lunch and losing your licence, (b) killing a herd of cyclists while driving drunk and going to prison, or (c), and this is the true nightmare scenario, not drinking at lunch. The answer: a campervan. Honestly. Don't scoff. Don't come over all, "If I wanted Margaret Beckett's opinion of a fun weekend I'd buy The Guardian." I know it sounds a bit comfy-shoes, holds-knife-like-pen, doors-to-manual and all that, but it's the answer to everything. Big lunch, two hours' kip in the car park, shower, cup of tea, and off on your way, sober, refreshed, and looking forward to supper.

I discovered this life-changing solution to the old quandary quite by chance last weekend. Obviously, I didn't hire the campervan specifically so I could get rat-faced at Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree Inn on Saturday and then the Wellington Arms at Baughurst on the Sunday. I hired it to drive to the 25th birthday party of a friend of Rachel's.

Remember 25ths? Another world. The invite specified fancy dress ("Mythical Beasts, Fantasy Lands") and suggested guests bring a sleeping bag to sleep in the marquee. On the floor. After the dancing wraps up at four in the morning. Still dressed as Gandalf. Amid the fag butts and spilt beer. The slurp of young people discovering new ways of loving. Dew in the morning. Lambs wandering in and out. Sheep shit.

I'm just too old for that. So it was either not go, and leave Rach to laugh with her contemporaries about what an old git I am, or find a way to get eight hours sleep in cotton sheets, a shower in the morning, my own loo, and somewhere to change back into civvies as soon as I could get away with it. So I hired a Chausson Flash '03: two double beds, plus two single bunks, proper bathroom, telly and dvd, fridge, three-ring hob and oven, nice Regency dining table seating up to 14...

And had just the best weekend ever. Apart from when I pranged it into a BMW estate at the Chievely services on the M4, five miles north of Newbury. I only wanted a wee (I forgot I had a loo on board). Cost me my £1,000 excess. Expensive wee. But, you know, the vehicle was about a mile long. I had been leaving my parking space for several minutes before I turned left and flattened the beamer which its owner had foolishly parked in the same country as me.

Less than 24 hours in and one crash already. Very dispiriting. Normally, I have to drive a vehicle for weeks before I get my first dent. So imagine how good a lunch would have to be to cheer me up after that.

Luckily, it was. I was not expecting to like the Yew Tree especially. I like Marco, but I am a bit sceptical about celebrity re-branding (they answer the phone "Hello, Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree Inn" and his name is written in giant letters on the outside of the pub), and I rather ungraciously expected it to be aimed at local food snobs who want a bit of Mirabelle glitz but are afraid to come to London because of all the asylum seekers.

Maybe it is. But it's a cute little place, with 17th-century beams, inglenook fireplace, and good old Timothy Taylor on tap to wash away post-prang trauma. Apart from that, it is more restaurant than pub, with linen on the tables, smartly dressed, well-informed staff, and hunting and fishing prints that hint at its ownership by the last great white hunter (indeed, much of the game on the menu is shot by Marco himself ­ woodcock, venison, pheasant, the odd critic when they're in season, waiters who didn't laugh at his jokes...).

The big creamy coloured menu will be familiar in look and contents to people who have visited any of MPW's restaurants over the years ­ though it features the heartier end of his range. And the punters were pure class: a dozen Anglo-French wedding goers (plus groom) in morning dress and cocktail gowns, tanking up before the ceremony, and the legendary London nightclub mogul Piers Adam, who has recently moved in nearby, lunching with his parents.

So classy was it, in fact, that Rachel admitted to being a little ashamed of the vehicle with which we had all but filled the car park. I, on the other hand, was delighted by it ­ frequently marching across the room to the front door and saying loudly "I'm off to use the loo, darling. Need anything from the caravan?"

Rach started with the "Wheeler's of St James's gravelax", which was badly spelled but beautifully made (to the Wheeler's recipe, but here, not there), and I had the calf's tongue, having first checked that it would come very thinly sliced, because I can't deal with a really chunky tongue in my mouth, unless it is my own. It was lovely and crunchy, almost with that cartilagey crackle of pig's ear, and perfectly complemented by a fat portion of very peppy celeriac remoulade.

Oh, and I had a second starter, the sardines on toast, which was a witty little thing: a crust-less white slice, fried to golden, with a layer of lively tomato mush and then two spankingly fresh sardines on top, filleted and laid face-down, their silvery backs glittering, the paradoxical sweetness/acidity of the tomatoes pulling the same trick for the oily fish as it has for a hundred years in the tinned original.

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