All I really know about Marseille is that they make soap there, and that a friend who once visited it described it as 'the arse of the world'. Which perhaps explains why they make soap there.

Anyway ... At Madrid airport en route to Marseille.

They scan my pack and the 100ml sized bottle of the strongest mosquito repellent known to man catches their eye as always, and the security staff look at the bottle to make sure it said 100ml or less and then let it through.

Terrorists take note, so long as the bottle says it is 100ml or less you will probably be alright. I am hugely cynical about the value of this procedure. I think that all it does is massively inconvenience millions of women who want to keep clean whilst away from home. If someone can give me evidence of this having any effect on the ability to prevent tragic heartbreaking senseless death and destruction please do, but until then ... hogwash.

My tent also caught their eye, they had a quick look at my poles (I said I'll show you mine if you show me yours ... he didn't laugh) and my little fold up brolly, doyenne of the wind and rain in Ireland, which probably looked like tent pegs on the x-ray machine as they had a look at that too, but it all went through.

Hoorah! I have arrived with a tent!!! I have arrived with a tent!! This is particularly good news as it is a Sunday afternoon in France when this civilised country will mainly be shut down.

My preparations for visiting a country seem to have peaked in Madrid and then immediately plummeted because I arrive in Marseille without any campsite addresses or maps or anything useful of any kind to help me find somewhere to stay the night. This unnerving situation is not entirely from lack of trying (which makes a change).

I have searched the net for campsites and not found any. All I have found is questions from other people planning to visit Marseille saying they can't find any campsites and doe anyone know of any. I registered on www.couchsurfing.com and contacted half a dozen people to see if they could put me up, but understandably it was a little short notice.

So I put all my hopes in the woman selling tickets in Marseille train station. "Do you know of any campsites near here?" I wait for the inevitable reply of, "Madame this is a railway station ticket office we do not sell campsites", but instead she looks over her shoulder and asks a man who happens to be passing through, he thinks a minute and then says something I don't understand. It turns out that what he said was La Ciotat, which is a town on the coast about half an hour east from Marseille. So I am sold a ticket to La Ciotat and told me what time it departs.

I have arrived in France on what is called a "jour de patrimoine" which means train fares are half price and entry to museums is free. If like me you are British, you will appreciate that the idea of the Government making stuff free for a day is about as unlikely as being invited to the ambassador's reception and finding they are serving pyramids of Ferreo Rocher to the guests.

The upshot of course is that it is very busy. It is also a popular day for students to be going back to university, so the station is full of a mixture of budget conscious young families having a good day out with their youngsters, worried looking parents giving last minute instructions about the dangers of drug taking to gleeful looking 18 year olds with freedom in their eyes, and a 42-year-old woman with a fringe that could do with a good trim walking from one end of the station to the other repeatedly like a brown bear driven mad by captivity, unable to perform the simple task of locating platform number 15.

I arrive in La Ciotat station along with lots of others. These others are all met by family and friends and bundle into waiting cars. I imagine they are all being driven home for a welcoming and delicious Sunday evening meal. I am left alone at the station with no buses or taxis or signs of a town or a campsite nearby. I am hit by a feeling that has been with me throughout my trip. A feeling that is a roller coaster cocktail of loneliness, fear and spine tingling ecstatic joy at the freedom and excitement of it all. This feeling of freedom is so tangible, it makes me want to do cartwheels, but I would only put my back out.

It really is very quiet, and I remember that this is Sunday afternoon in France. Which generally means no buses or no food shops open. The thought of not having any access to food until tomorrow morning unnerves me more than you can imagine.

The station is perched on land cut into the side of a hill so I have a choice whether to take the road uphill or down. I have never understood why 'the easy option' gets such a bad press. Why do people say "well that would be the easy option" with a glum face and a negative shake of the head as if it is really bad. Hoorah for the easy option I say, all easy options welcome. Step this way and make yourself known.

I am a friend of the easy option and with me it will always find a home. With that in mind I trundle downhill. Despite there not being any people or buildings around, the south of France introduces itself to me with the scent of pine from trees recently freshened from the short rain shower. The smell reminds me of cleaning the loo at home, oh be still my poetic soul. It also reminds me of xmas, but the backdrop is like neither, with dry brown earth on the floor, clear blue sky and smudgy green olive trees clinging to the auditorium of hills around me .

Antastic Unzipping my lovely little Spanish import in the morning, I see blue sky, hot sunshine and a snaking black line of purposeful hungry ants, each one the size of Paris Hilton's dog, surrounding my pitch. Their brown earth home is more monument than mound, it is so huge it throws a shadow over my tent.

It must be something that a dictator ant has been building for the last 50 years using slave ant labour to celebrate in perpetuity his glorious reign over the ant world, in which he and his 1,000 ant concubines will be buried when he is inevitably stabbed by his jealous younger brother who is also hungry for more ant power.

I have never seen such a big anthill, which isn't saying much cos this is the first anthill I have ever seen, but this baby is big. I am sure if I looked inside its little corridors there would be Sarah Beeney approved size kitchen diners for the ant army market and en-suite bedrooms a plenty.

Fortunately because my tent is carry-on-airline friendly I am pegloose and guy rope free so I easily drag my tent to a less insect populated part of the campsite, and hope they don't follow me.

My itinerary for the day is the same as usual, follow my nose and see where it leads me. I stand at a bus stop outside the campsite for 10 minutes and try to decipher it. Bearing in mind I don't know the names of any of the places here or have a map this pretty much pointless. (Although even if I did I probably still wouldn't be able to understand it.) I am itching to be moving so I give up and start walking. It is a busy road and there is no pavement so I just have to hope I don't get knocked down by a passing truck or lorry. The campsite have my passport and I have left my bank card hidden in my tent, (so many places to choose from no one will ever find it) so there would be no way of identifying me or contacting anyone if anything happened to me. I have no wish to be mortally wounded but this kind of anonymity excites me. The feeling of escape is a kind of freedom and fulfils part of the brief of my journey, which is to escape.

Do you expect me to talk Goldfinger? No Mr Bond I expect you to die Coming round a corner often opens up new opportunities for exploring and the view round this corner is particularly breathtaking.

I am high up on the hillside and there is a bay laid out before me. The sea is 100 feet below but I can see right through it to the sandy bottom. The sun is firing dazzling gold fireworks across the surface.

With a thrill that comes from having read and loved the Famous Five too much, too young, I hold my breath and believe without a shadow of a doubt that I have stumbled on Dr No's hideout. Across the bay a rocky outcrop that looks like a giant lizard's tongue rises out of the sea. It is just the right shape to hide a secret missile base and I imagine a legion of white coated scientists inside and the electric echo of a countdown as the go for launch ticks ever nearer unless millions of dollars are wired into the bad guy's off shore bank account.

This Moonraker set fantasy is added to as two red and yellow planes roar over my head and swoop down around the bay and land briefly on the water before soaring upwards again with a great kick of spray behind them as they take off. Oh where is the man in the tuxedo when you need him?

I can' t wait to get down there. Well actually it seems I can wait, cos I see a bakery and pop in to get two puffy crunchy buttery croissants. Next door to the bakery (is where I would like to live) is a bar and I am thirsty.

It has a garden of baked earth and shady trees, behind it are three boules pitches, currently vacant. The walls of the bar are wooden framed art deco style glazed doors with green and yellow coloured panels, they open up onto the garden.

Seated outside are cassoulet bellied Frenchmen wearing hunting vests, drinking pastis and beer and poring over the racing pages. It is ten o'clock in the morning and I am the only woman in the place apart from the girl in the booth in the corner that takes the bets.

I get a tiny coffee and go outside with my croissants. In France you can eat things you haven't bought in the place without anyone insisting you leave. Eating, in France is like breathing, you have to do it and to try and stop you would be criminal.

No one talks to me in the bar and I talk to no one, but they all talk to each other. I am a bit off the beaten track here and get the impression that this is where the local men come to avoid tourists and everyone else including their wives.

I feel like an anthropologist observing the 'Provencal man' it is so different from my usual life on Monday morning at my desk. I share my croissant with a shaggy red haired dog. He is quiet, doesn't moan when I keep the biggest piece for myself, and has a handsome furry face. He reminds me of someone back home.

The fast duly broken and the feasting hours warming up I reluctantly leave this little hiding place and head for the beach. As soon as I see the sea I know I have to swim in it. The season is winding down so the beach isn't packed, but skinny dipping is not an option. Luckily there is a shop right on the esplanade selling 'everything for the beach'.

A swimsuit and a mat later and I am on the sand writing postcards. The simple pleasure of sitting on a beach in the sun watching the horizon and listening to the waves roll in deserves more descriptive power than I have.

There is something about a beach. The fresh air, the rhythmic pounding of waves on the sand like a mantra that manages to overpower even a fragmented mind like mine and wrestle it into submission. Allowing my senses to be soothed like a balm ... for barmy people.

Can I just say, I love it? That I am happy, with a capital H. I can't believe I am here, that it only cost me £1.00 to get here and the price of a cinema ticket to stay the night. I feel a chilling fear that I could have missed this.

I could have been at my desk on this Monday morning struggling to justify why a man who strangled a woman to death should not be allowed to leave prison. Instead I am here on the beach in late September, and I can stay for as long as I want (obviously I will leave temporarily at lunchtime to get something to eat, but I can come back).

No agenda, no timetable, no purpose, just me. The fear is replaced with an unusual feeling. I think it 's called certainty? A warm steadfast unwavering thought, I kind of like it.

I feel I have made the right choice in leaving work and home to take this journey. Some moments, however fleeting in life are more precious than the sum of its parts, and this is one of those.