So what does a camp-hardy, be-rucksacked, adventurous, spirited gal like me do when lost in the woods of Paris with nighttime big bad wolves fast approaching? Easy. Phone a friendly Beard back home and ask him, coutesy of his employers, to "look up where the bloody hell this flipping campsite is then".

The receptionist at the campsite listens with the patience of a therapist to my tale of how I turned what should have been a short two stop metro hop into ... Well you know what it turned into.

She shares my despair for les hommes as only a Frenchwoman can, and many therapeutic shoulder shrugs and oh la la la las later, I am booked in.

The tents area is squashed up on a bank where camper vans would not pay to go. Several bodies are lying comatose in front of various tents. It looks like they have been struck down with something. I did Bonjour to the first body decked out in Simpsons boxers and get no response, outside another tent perched at 45 degree angle I say hello to a man wearing only a pair of greying underpants, again nothing. I wonder if they are all on drugs. It is a far cry from the boggy campsites of Ireland where the rain was our enemy and we were a happy band of brothers united against it ... completely futilely of course.

I throw up my tent onto ground too hard to get pegs into and go in search of people wearing clothes.

La Defense

With a 5 day Paris Visite ticket in hand I am licensed to roam. I walk past posters inviting me to 'Smack la faim' courtesy of KFC and take the metro line into the centre of Paris, except what I actually do is get on the wrong train and bowl out in completely the opposite direction towards the Peripherique and La Defense, the city's financial district. Well I've never been there so I might as well take a peek. I get off at Corbevoie and can't help a "wow" escaping out loud as I come up the stairs and see Grande Arche. It was one of Mitterand's grand projects in the 80s, and part of a deliberate policy by Paris planners to keep skyscrapers out of the centre. This was done after Paris's only skyscraper, Tour Montparnasse, was loathed by Parisiens city wide. They describe it with derision as "the box the Eiffel tower came in".

Grande Arche is grande indeed, in fact it is monstrously huge without being a monster in any way. The vast open space inside and the sharp edges of its frame that contain the sky over Paris makes it light and elegant. A French window indeed.

La Defense is an autosapien free zone, it is so enormous it is divided into quarters. Although there are thousands of people there, it has a calm cathedral like atmosphere and you can crane your neck to look up at the buildings and walk around safely.

Skyscrapers are usually shoe horned in cheek by gutter to other buildings, and you can't stand back and see the whole thing. This forest of buildings is just beautiful and you get to see them in their entirety. You can stand at a distance, then walk right up to the door and go all the way around it seeing surprising changes in the line of the building, a curve cut out of 24 floors here and a twist like a hunchback on the top there. The sky and clouds ripple in reflection across acres of glassiness and the colours of the buildings change with them. It is an architectural sculpture park vibrant and gutsy. There is creative stuff at ground level too with innovative installation art including the totally crazy 12 metre high thumb sculpture, an energetic dancing fountain that made me want to run through it. (It actually made me want to strip off and run through it naked, but I didn't think you'd really want to know that.)

As if this place wasn't exciting enough I am just grinning cheesily into the lens of my camera when Johnny Depp comes strolling moodily by. He must have been to see his accountant. He is scowling and dragging deeply on a cigarette (oh that I were that cigarette). He looks taller in real life. Thumbs up indeed!

Hidden in one of the buildings is the biggest shopping centre in France. It really is hidden and took me completely by surprise (honest). There is an "all your dreams come true girls" Sephora and I truly recommend the Haagen Dazs pecan tart with vanilla and macadaemia ice cream.

Every cloud has ... it in for me.

On the way back from La Defense a grey cloud the shape of a shamrock began to gather in the distance.

I have no brolley and no pac-a-mac, I feel a little nervous.

As I get to the stop, the yellow campsite bus has just left, but this being Paris it is stuck at the lights. Forgetting to look the right way and so causing a squeal of brakepads, I dash across the road to try and catch it, but life wouldn't be fun if it was that easy would it. The lights change and I go back to wait for the next regular service bus. The cloud approaching defines the phrase "dark and brooding", i.e. I just know there's a lot of rain up there.

Surprise. I am on the next bus and 10 minutes from shelter and it is still not yet overhead. I think I' m just going to make it ... And I would have ... if I had not got off at the wrong bus stop, and relived my former glorious nomadic days of wandering the Bois de blinking Boulogne like a flaming lamb to the slaughter singing "Oh my, how I love the smell of mint sauce in the morning".

I see a sign saying 200m to campsite, tantalisingly close, but ... whats the phrase? Close but no cigar, I think Havana must have been washed away by the ensuing tidal wave. The heavens opened and when I say heavens I mean the Moslem, Christian and Jewish ones all together, and hell too.

I "shelter" under some bois, and nearly drown, so I figure I may as well swim for it, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, but with no Leo to console me, I waded back to the campsite.

When I got there, with no pleasant thoughts of dancing fountains in my mind, I stripped off my sodden clothing outside the tent, left it there like flotsam on the tide and crawled in. I wrapped my dripping hair, in my still woefully inadequate camping towel and lay looking anxiously at the seams on my tent.

This is weather that fishermen would not go to sea in.

This is weather that would make Viking raiders return to the icy fjords of their home.

Is it because I lied when I was 17?