YOU ARE my friend. I can hide nothing from you. So I admit, my friend, that today I conked out. I collapsed, inwards on myself. I died. I crumpled and I passed away. There... I have made my confession. You, a cyclist, will understand.

The day started well enough. We rode a short hill up round the other side of Chalmazel, skirting the town cemetery full of the usual absurd angels and weeping figures that mark the French dead. And then we bowled down the other side of the climb we made yesterday, rushing impertinently through little villages not wholly prepared for our sudden arrival. And then, when the best thing seemed to be to stop for coffee, we were greeted by the chef of the hotel at whose outside tables we sat.

He was stocky, grey-haired, bright eyed and had a little triangular beard. He looked like a man who could concoct a thousand sauces and would see it beneath himself to serve just three coffees. But no.

"You are very welcome," he beamed as much as said as he emerged. He spread his arms and turned his palms towards us as though for a moment he planned to hug us one by one. "What can I do for you?"

By then he had been joined by a shy little girl who could have been any age from 12 to 18 and whose timidity cut out her out for any job but waitress. She listened to our order while looking at us through mascara so thick that she looked as though two crows had hit her flat in the face. And then, too slim to cast a shadow, she left silently to make three coffees.

They weren't enough for the chef. When the silent and pipe-thin waitress returned and placed our coffees and milk jug on the table without a word, he returned with a plate of apricots and plums.

"Where are you all from?", he asked, once more resisting the urge to squash us all in a bear hug.

We told him: two of us were French but born in England and the third was American and adopted by California.

"Alors, vous êtes un melting-pot," he said, using the English word. And then he came back with small sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs.

"For you," he said, "to give you strength."

We needed strength. We were wakened by the thought of the bill. It came to five euros each, about the going rate for coffee outside a hotel plus a euro for the rest and the show. Karen, who had been clucking delight throughout, gave him a pin badge of crossed French and American flags she had brought for just such moments.

Well, had the day continued like that, all would have been well. But after lunch we hit another long col - or it seemed long, anyway - and first it rained and then lightning broke out around us and finally the horsemen of the apocalypse rode by.

Heart

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I was on my knees. Karen and Steph were bright and darting but I put on such a good show outside a hotel of being just three breaths short of death that they pushed me inside and on to a bed. And there I slept, unwashed and unmoving for two and a half hours, before blood began once more to flow.

I have made my confession. I know you will understand.