My friend Tom and I have shared many things. Climbing trips in the Pyrenees, rock climbing in Scotland. Back in our university days we shared a house and even, we later found out, a girlfriend or two.

What I never expected, however, was to one day find myself and Tom, both of us now stolid middle-aged fathers, sharing one of the most romantic French holidays ever devised. Exclusively and with each other.

It all happened rather suddenly. We’d been planning one of our periodic climbing trips when we heard about a tempting trip to Provence.It was described in lavish terms — we’d be cycling through an area renowned even in France for its food and wine and staying in hotels chosen accordingly.

It was, however, the train journey that hooked us. The trip began with a Eurostar journey to Avignon that took just six hours from London. In 2006 I’d driven that route and it took nearly two days. We could leave London in the morning and be pedalling through the vineyards and olive groves by teatime.

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The cycling was the other attraction. Provence is renowned for its beauty and June would be one of the best of months to visit. I sounded out the wife but no — with a full-time job and three kids, there was no way. So Tom it was; and we both looked forward to the normal hairy-chested mixture of physical exertion and big meals, accompanied by a blissful sense of release from family duties.

The first inkling that this trip might be rather different didn’t come until we arrived at Moulin d’Aure, our first hotel, in the beautiful if sleepy village of Graveson. It was a converted chateau, surrounded by high walls and immaculate rustic gardens. It was, in short, very romantic indeed. Then we were shown to our room and it too was everything a loving couple could have wanted — although, thankfully, a little negotiation got us the one room with twin beds.

It was over supper that night that we reread the Belle France brochure and realised what kind of holiday we were on. It was clearly designed for lovers. The maps the company had sent us, with the routes marked, would take us on a romantic journey around some of Provence’s most beautiful countryside, wending through sleepy farmland, olive groves and vineyards, before depositing us each night at a different but equally luxurious and intimate hotel.

With a wife or lover it would have been perfect. With Tom as a roommate — well, certain kinds of intimacy, even between the best of friends, can be too much. And that’s especially true when it comes to snoring. Put two men in a room and one of them always does it, like some kind of unconscious machismo contest. By day two I’d invested in earplugs.

That first night also saw our first shock — when we got the wine list. Call us naive but we’d expected wine prices, or at least some of them, to be reasonably low in an area that makes millions of gallons of the stuff a year. But at supper that night the cheapest wines began at £25 a bottle and most were nearer £50.

Fortunately Belle France gives you the chance of paying for all meals up front — so the wine becomes almost the only extra you need to find. And the quality, almost always high, made that quite bearable.

The first day’s cycling was all we had hoped for. The itinerary took us along small country lanes to the crossing of the River Rhone at Aramon, through Remoulins and on to the main stopping point of the day.

The aqueduct at Pont du Gard was built in about 50AD to transport water from the hills around Uzès to Nimes, a distance of more than 30 miles. It is now a Unesco world heritage site with 1.25m visitors a year. We ate lunch on the rocks below the aqueduct stunned by the ride, the view and the sheer scale of what the Romans achieved.

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