Quirky is good in the current climate of cookery writing and Felicity Cloake’s One More Croissant for the Road is a very fine example. Her idea of matching a love affair with French food and a beyond ordinary love of cycling, works brilliantly. Written in a breezy, confiding style with a croissant-rating scheme at its core, this culinary Tour de France is a greedy gobble. As she cycles and eats her way through her food favourite parts of France, we devour with her, sharing the many disappointments whilst happily enjoying the successes and learning as we go. I particularly loved her encounter with cassoulet and reading about moules made me rush to the fishmonger so I could cook moules mariniere. Despite the obvious plans to dovetail meals and stopovers and link-ups with friends, hardly a day goes completely smoothly and there is a lot of making do – pizza instead of tarte Tatin, for example, and a lot of rain. It’s a very good read, the perfect French holiday book with a few key recipes. It prompted me, holidaying in blustery Greece as I read the book, to devour far more spinach pies than I might have done, instigating a croissant-inspired spinach pie rating.