DON'T ASK ME why but my first ambition on a bike was to see the mermaid in Copenhagen harbour. I was 13, I think. My only experience of Abroad had been an afternoon's ferry trip to Boulogne, on the French coast. My mother, never at ease with foreigners, complained that the French spoke too loudly. But I was hooked.

Actually cycling in another country was different, though, and all my friends said I should go to see a kid in the next street, someone called Terry Collingbone.

Because Terry had Ridden Abroad!

Well, you don't talk to older boys when you're 13. Big kids, like grown-ups, are Trouble. You keep out of their way. At the least, he would laugh at me. I mean, he was probably 16 or 17. Maybe older. So I walked by his house several times and wondered but never dared knock. And so I didn't get to see the mermaid.

Well, it's never too late to achieve your life's ambitions. I know she's only tiny, and I know people say I'll wonder why I bothered when I see her. But symbols are important and the little siren is an emblem of my childhood and of all the hopes, fears and uncertainties of the age. I will be fulfilling the first and laying to rest the other two.

I'll also master another ambition, fill another gap. Although I was born in southern England, and although Scotland by any global standard is only a hop away, I have never been north of Glasgow or Edinburgh. France has been the centre of my world for 30 years now and there was always a better reason to be there than high in Scotland, a country with different laws, different bank notes, a history of its own and an accent for which I need subtitles.

So, here we go. I am about to gallop off in all directions, to the very north of Scotland, to Copenhagen and to Sweden, then south through Poland and Bohemia.

If you'll join me, please do. I'll be flattered. Thanks.