I don’t like driving long distances. The thought of hours veering between monotony and mayhem on motorways fills me with loathing. I’d rather walk or stay at home.

So when my wife and I decided to spend a couple of months in the south of France, with our dog, we looked for ways of getting there by car without enduring a 700 miles slog from the Channel to the Cote d’Azur.

One solution was the Motorail service from Calais to points south, on which motorists travel overnight with their vehicles. But a quick check uncovered a litany of complaints about old rolling stock, opaque windows, thefts, and generally scruffy conditions.

Rail Europe, which markets the service in the UK, says it is aware of the problems, but responsibility for them lies with French Railways, SNCF. It was a breakthrough this year when the SNCF agreed to replace the frosted windows with clear glass, it says.

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In any case, the Motorail was a non-starter for us, because it operates only until the end of September, and we were planning to travel in October. Then a French friend told us about the Auto-Train, which is how French motorists have been getting around their country since 1957.

This is a year-round service linking Paris with a dozen destinations, and even more in summer. The difference is the vehicle travels alone, and you follow it when you like in the high-speed comfort of a TGV - or you can fly if you prefer.

No traffic jams, no roadworks, no fatigue, no problem. Drop off the car in Paris, enjoy a night somewhere on the Left Bank, and hop on a TGV next day. It seemed simple enough.

First there was the Channel crossing. My wife Claire was adamant - no question of burrowing beneath it in a tunnel, she wanted the romance and adventure of watching the white cliffs recede from the deck of a ship.

So we chose SeaFrance for the Gallic experience - a couple of steps from the Dover quayside and we were already in another country, surrounded by the accents of Paris and Picardy, with a tricolour on the aft deck snapping in the breeze. Claire was right.

The white cliffs offered their usual splendid farewell beneath blue skies as the steady throb of the engines propelled us towards the distant smudge of Normandy.

The drive to Paris was about as far as I wanted to go - less than 200 miles - and was fairly straightforward. The Auto-Train terminus is at the Gare de Bercy in the east of the city, so we took the A26 to the A1, then the A3 (signposted Bobigny) to join the Boulverard Peripherique at Bagnolet.

A few exits later we pulled off at the Porte de Bercy, followed signs for the Palais Ominsports de Bercy, then picked up signs for the Gare de Bercy.

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