Why does anyone fly Easyjet from Liverpool when they can be nurtured and spoken to politely by the lovely BMI staff at the equally lovely Manchester airport?

No having to pay 50p for plastic bags to transport your lippy through security, no queues snaking through the whole shopping ‘experience’, just clean, calm thoroughfares, polite staff and professional service. And BMI even gives you a nice hot panini and cup of tea whilst the plane bucks its way through the turbulence to France.

At Lyon I had a moment of quiet triumph when I managed to get directions to the coach that was to take me to Eurexpo where SIRHA was held. In time honoured fashion, beloved by coach drivers throughout the world, there were no signs in the bus window and no discernable bus stop, and it left earlier than it said it would, but I rumbled that little game by turning up a whole half an hour early. Thank goodness I didn’t ask the nice lady behind the desk in fluent Welsh as I have done before, my brain seizing onto any words that come under the category of ‘foreign’.

The Welsh stand was coming together well, despite being knee deep in sawdust, thanks to the professional ministrations of the dynamic duo Jacquie and Sian.

I tagged onto a small party going back to the hotel necessitating a bus and metro journey, plus a brisk walk at the other side. My hand luggage was being carried by a kind colleague so I didn’t notice until well after checking in that there was a puddle of water slowly spreading through the lobby. I sloped off, leaving the aforesaid colleague to explain that it had come from my case not through the ceiling.

Omigod. The top had come off an unopened bottle of Welsh spring water- serves me right for not buying Llanllyr or Ty Nant which would never be so ill bred as to open unexpectedly- and soaked through my laptop and all my chargers. The computer actually sloshed when shaken and the chargers obligingly sparked when plugged in. I used all the towels in my bathroom and spent a happy hour with my hairdryer with a 50% success rate.

Dinner was taken locally in the company of my fellow exhibitors around a glass topped billiard table. The food was good if a bit eccentric- carpaccio of beef with parmesan shavings, yes, but served with a dish of chips?? However, the sole meuniere was irreproachable.

The show started at 9am every morning and the journey was at least an hour, so there were no lie-ins.

I had expected lots of French visitors but not so many from the rest of the world, which showed how wrong I was. Over the following days I met people from Dubai, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Hong Kong, Brazil, French Caribbean, the UK and Singapore.

The show was a mixture of big corporations, small artisan producers and the occasional wacky thing thrown in for good measure. Falling into the latter category was a stand making jewellery and lipsticks out of sugar, a man who made sculptures out of cutlery and a chef who was doing interesting things with bread.

    

On the second night we hit the old town. In true Welsh exhibitor fashion a pub meeting place was identified and earmarked for future evenings- literally earmarked as it displayed a large toy white tiger lying outside its entrance. We searched for a restaurant that could take 10 of us and found one that obligingly squeeeezed us into a tiny but convivial upper balcony where we feasted on salad Lyonnaise, a green salad with lardons and a poached egg, salmon, and fromage blanc.

Sunday was clearly the day when the whole family came to the show, complete with babies and grandmothers accompanying restaurateurs and retailers.

That evening Nerys and I dipped out of a visit to the ‘White Tiger’ and instead managed to get a table at L’Est, one of the 4 brasseries in Lyon run by the Bocuse family and conveniently situated a few minutes walk away from our hotel.

It was fab: bustling, energetic with plenty to watch as we ate our olives and homemade bread, our Bresse chicken with buttery mashed potato and mustardy green salad, our steamed platter of fish on a saffron mussel broth, and frothy macchiato with Valronha chocolates. A party of older women on a nearby table shared an enormous platter of oysters and then went straight onto puddings- teetering heaps of poached meringue, sticky rhum babas and shiny brown crème brulees.

Monday brought rush hour stress with seemingly thousands of people battling their way to SIRHA until you actually reached our stand when it was magically empty. We discovered the advantages of a tiny slug of Bloody Mary- tomato juice, Welsh vodka, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and Halen Môn sea salt with organic celery seeds, both as a personal pick-me-up and to lure visitors to the stand.

Those of you who are used to exhibiting at food fairs will know the importance of your neighbours. It’s simply no good being opposite some worthy company selling wipes or heat probes. Luckily for us we were surrounded by Danes with their gorgeous cheeses and smoked cod’s roe products (www.bornholms.com) , and Belgians with chocolates and pastries. And what’s more, the Danes were preparing for a state visit by their Food minister and throwing a party the next day, to which we were invited!

That night I went to bed even earlier after a plate of spaghetti with parsley and garlic and a green salad. Such are the prices in Lyon that the cost of that coming in at 20 euro seemed like a bit of a bargain.

Tuesday saw the start of my new career as a butcher. Graham, the highly skilled professional butcher who works with Hybu Cig Cymru to promote red meat, kindly tutored me in the art of making French trimmed rack of lamb. He hovered around me like an anxious mother saying helpful things like ‘that knife’s very sharp’, ‘you’ve taken off far too much meat there’ and, my favourite, ‘you haven’t been listening, have you’. It made me feel young again.

I also enjoyed chatting to my immediate neighbour, Mogens Poulsen, who makes the most delicious cheese, a kind of cross between mature gruyere and aged Gouda. Find out more on www.thise.dk. We discussed a variety of topics including Isak Dinesen’s book, Babette’s Feast, and the Welsh gene pool that apparently still exists today in Scandinavia, as the result of a Viking raid on Anglesey many years ago. As Mogens said, ‘We have done it once and we can do it again’, so lock up your wives and daughters!

For some unknown reason the journey back from the show was an absolute nightmare. There were just two buses shuttling the vast numbers of visitors between the show and the Metro station and the whole scene resembled refugees flying from an invading horde- possibly the Danes up to their old tricks again. We were forced to act as one, surging forward onto the bus which waited patiently as people hurled themselves onto it, and then spewing out together at the other end.

We had a great meal that night in a restaurant near to the hotel: foie gras with fig jam, finished with a little Halen Môn- yes, ok, we had to take it with us to the restaurant otherwise we’d have ended up eating sel de Guerande or Camargue- roast Bresse chicken, fine beans, asparagus spears and garlic, fresh crunchy bread and red wine.

Why don’t we designate good chicken in the UK by its origin?

Patrick of Llanllyr bravely/foolishly ordered the local andouilettes. We did try to warn him. I have tried these just the once and have never forgotten the sight- and smell- of greyish intestines spilling out of the sausage casing. The picture isn’t very good quality but I think the expression on his face says it all.

Lunches at the show tended to be a hastily grabbed chunk of bread and pate or we grazed on Nerys’ fabulous Welsh lamb cutlets, beautifully trimmed by me earlier in the day. One of the exhibitors, though, was telling me about a trip he made out to meet a French lamb farmer and to look round an abattoir. Attached to the latter was a full-on restaurant. Behind the tables were chilled glass cabinets displaying carcases of lamb and beef and on the menu was, well, basically just meat. You could have it rare or raw and it came with chips, cooked in lard. Apparently the place was full, of workers, managers, visitors and the general public. Extraordinary and not something you would expect to find in Britain.

The final day of the show was its usual manic self: exhibitors feverishly swapping produce, waves of older middle aged women with shopping bags on wheels blagging samples: ‘can I take one of these please? And what is it?’ or even just randomly grabbing things.

I went off with my freely given spoils- mainly Danish cheeses- and once back in the hotel got myself ready for our pilgrimage to the Restaurant Paul Bocuse.

It was an extraordinary evening; my one regret is that I didn’t have my son with me (the one who is training to be an oarsman) as he alone would have done justice to the size and richness of each dish.

It was truly an experience not to be missed: legions of waiters, enormous platters of food, ornate silverware and everywhere, everything, branded Paul Bocuse.

Outside as well as inside was exquisite with winter decorations: pollarded trees painted white and decorated with enormous baubles, window boxes with white twigs and tiny white lights, and a gigantic mural of the great man himself, leaning out of a window to welcome his guests.

We started with an amuse bouche of salt cod and potato with a cheese beignet. This was followed by duck terrine and foie gras served with an artichoke and black truffle Sauterne jelly. Then came a whole sea bass baked in the most exquisite buttery pastry (no Jus Roll there) and stuffed with a pistachio mousseline. It looked splendid and was carved and filleted at the table and served with a buttery, creamy lobster sauce.

Then came a selection of cheeses, each beautifully presented, at its peak, ranked by animal origin- cow, goat, and sheep- with huge bowls of thick cream and young cream cheeses. I asked to try a small portion of fromage blanc but was presented with a whole one- ‘you do not have to eat it all, Madame, it is the French way’, at least I avoided the whipped cream that was also offered.

Then came a crepe suzette and finally, the puddings- a raft of them; soft poached meringues glazed with caramel, meringue cake, crème brulee, chocolate cherry cake, rhum baba, soft fruits cooked in a caramel sheen, and in silver ice containers, homemade vanilla icecream and mandarin sorbet, served on a bed of candied bitter orange.

We had a tisane in a desperate attempt to settle our stomachs and even that came with a stand of homemade chocolates and tiny pastries.

As I say, a real experience, but not one that my arteries or bank balance will forget in a hurry.

The staff were universally professional and although we didn’t see M. Paul we did see Madame Bocuse who greeted each table with an elegant ‘Bonsoir, et bon appétit’. I left some of our new ‘Diamonds of the Sea’ for the great man but haven’t yet received a thank you or an order….

The trip was rounded off in typical French fashion with the news that there was a general strike. It is a fact that my French lessons at school included the words ‘en greve’ which came in handy some 30 years later.

Thanks to my kind colleague, Adrian, a taxi had been booked well in advance to take us to the airport and we managed to spot the deliberate mistake on our flight information listing the wrong terminal and made our way to the right place in plenty of time. The flight went well, with me again congratulating myself that I hadn’t booked Air France (on strike) or Easyjet (just plain horrid) and I was back in the bosom of my family by teatime.

I would love to do business in France and I think that some of the younger chefs are up for a change from the ubiquitous fleur de sel; I’m not holding my breath but I am looking forward to trying again.