The moon is full, my headlight beams are sweeping the countryside like searchlights but still I can't find the place. To get this far I've been driving a raucously noisy, open-top car slightly bigger than a coffin with no heater and racing suspension for eight hours straight.

It was fun for the first five hours. Like flying an earthbound Sopwith Camel, strapped into the snug cockpit with the windscreen deflecting the rain over my head. But now it's dark and, thanks to my questionable navigational aptitude and the French habit of assigning regional roads not one but a selection of numbers, I'm two hours late and lost.

I'm also cold, hungry, my ears are ringing and - never a good sign - I've been muttering lurid expletives to myself since somewhere just outside Laval, when the N171 decided to start calling itself the 771 for a laugh and the rain started dripping down my neck.

I kill the engine to check my phone and I'm almost overwhelmed with gratitude when a voicemail message directs me to a cosy pizzeria-grill in the nearest town, Pouancé, in the Maine-et-Loire department, where Norman and Lynne Verona, owners of the French Blatting Company, are patiently waiting.

A classics feast in France

The Times' cartoonist crosses the Channel to find a flourishing chamber music festival in an abbey in northern France

Teen cooking classes in France

Cathy Smith's daughter and friend weren't quite teenagers when they visited, but they were soon cooking up a storm

• 14 tasty cookery courses

BACKGROUND

• The cheese-lover's guide to France

• The cunning holiday guide to France in August

• The budget guide to the French Riviera

• Deauville: a classy Channel resort

• Don't pass Pas de Calais

Related Internet Links

• Peregrine's France: the Sunday Times francophile reveals all

Related Links

• The insiders' guide to bohemian Paris

For those unfamiliar with the verb “to blat”, it is a slang term for driving for pleasure in common usage among the owners of small, hopelessly impractical but hugely entertaining sports cars. Cars like the almost luminously lime-green 210hp Caterham Seven R400 that has just brought me here to the western Loire Valley.

Created by the Lotus designer Colin Chapman more than 50 years ago, the minimalist Seven still commands a devoted following. So when Lotus Seven Club members Norman and Lynne retired to La Foie, a farm between Pouancé and Segré, they converted the barns into motoring-themed gîtes for people who share their passion.

Wonderful though they are, the trouble with track-orientated sports cars such as the Seven and its modern cousin the Lotus Elise - the Veronas own one of each - is space. There isn't any.

So the idea of the French Blatting Company is to equip the gîtes - named The Lotus Suite and The MG Suite - so comprehensively that guests can embark on their driving holiday with minimal luggage; just a passport, toothbrush and a change of clothes.

Despite the rain, Norman is waiting outside the restaurant to meet me as the mud-spattered Seven rumbles into Pouancé's deserted town centre. Then, after a warm welcome and a restorative steak and beer, I scoop as much rainwater as I can out of the car's aptly named bucket seats and follow Norman and Lynne back to the farm, tucked away up a track between the villages of Noellet and Armaille. No wonder I couldn't find it...

I'm the first guest of the season and the Lotus Suite, a spacious modern barn conversion, is a little cold. On the plus side, there is a gas heater and a fantastic hot power shower, not to mention a stack of towels, fresh flowers and a kitchen pre-stocked with fresh food.

There's a vast stash of booze, too, including five bottles of good local red, two bottles of cider, and a fridge filled with beer, chilled chablis and rosé. It's all included in the price but, says Lynne, nobody has yet managed to drink the Lotus Suite dry.

Much as I'd like to take up the challenge, it's 11pm and I'm dog-tired. Guests sometimes arrive later, keeping a worried Lynne up to the wee hours on occasion. But, after the sensory overload of my journey, bed is more appealing than the motoring DVDs and collected works of Jeremy Clarkson on the shelves. It's time to retire and dream of motorways.

Times recommends

• Bogus websites are conning hundreds out of their holidays
• The complete last minute holiday guide
• Croatia: the flashing blades of Korcula