I think it was between my first and second years at HCS that a load of us went on a PGL watersports holiday to the south of France. To this day, the very mention of the word "Sunsport" can revive nostalgia in any group of Old Herefordians who went, and deep-seated frustration in other OHs who have been periodically obliged to listen to this exclusive trip down memory lane since 1990.

And it still is worth remembering.

You can imagine that a drive from Hereford to the south of France in a coached filled with 11-13 year old kids is going to be hell, and I'm sure it was for the teachers and bus drivers, although Dave the Bus was about as cheery a guy as you can imagine. God knows I tried every possible position to sleep on that bus, and the best I could come up with was lying flat under the seat; but of course, kids will be kids, and some people just wanted to stay up talking all night long. We stopped at services to buy pains au chocolat for breakfast, and watched naff videos during the day.

I can't remember how long it took us to get to Segries (or Segs, as the student PGL staff called it), but we were joined on our coach by the staff who immediately started a series of deceptions for the amusement of anyone with enough wit to spot them. These included pointing out fields where they told us llama racing took place, and telling us we were going to be paddling in canoes around the Ardeche, a circular gorge, starting and finishing at the town of Vallon. Hmmm... It didn't take long for them to get us to abandon our adolescent notions of being too old to act like children, and get us singing songs, and responding to cries of "Tennis, tennis, tennis!" with "Balls, balls, balls!" and the like, and shouting, "Show us you're nuts, Matt!" Oh, what fun. But surely their most amusing jape was to tell us they'd run out of toilet paper at the camp, so they'd have to ration us. When we got off the coach, they gave us each 3 sheets of loo paper, then started showing us around the facilities. When we got to the toilets, a guy wrapped from head to toe in bogroll leapt out with a hose and drenched the lot of us. How we laughed.

Six of us shared a room at Segs, and these six partnered up in canoes: Ryan and Anthony, Richard and Tim, Chris and I. Each day we dragged our canoes into the water and paddled down rapids and calm water; it was hard work at times, but great fun. Unfortunately, some git had convinced a bunch of us to buy jelly shoes so we could walk in the river (and later the sea) without hurting our feet on anything nasty. This worked, but it also left my feet with a patchwork of sunburn where the straps left them uncovered. Very attractive... Each day, we had a pleasant lunch of salad, cold meats, and fruit, and went swimming and jumping off rocks into the cool water. It was great.

There were few injuries, thankfully. At one point, we were dragging our canoes up one riverbank using a rope and all the boys pulling on it, when Aidan got pulled off his feet; instead of letting go of the rope, he resolutely clung to it and was dragged along a fair distance. Ouch. Seems like an error of judgment, but there was no lasting damage, although I think his anorak suffered a nasty tear...

The facilities at Segs were great; we had a swimming pool and volleyball court, and there were "ents" every night (is this starting to sound like an advert?), where the staff prevailed upon us to do crazy things to entertain ourselves. I still cringe when I think of our rendition of "I'm too sexy" before a crowd of everyone in the entire camp. No surprises we didn't win that competition!

The end of our time in Segs came when we canoed into Vallon, having navigated the "circular river". Our guides, determined to have us believe that the two Vallons were one and the same, tried to point out places we'd "already seen." I know we were children, but we weren't that gullible!

Our second venue was Mimosa, on the coast, somewhere near Beziers, I think. Frances and I spent our first afternoon on the beach wrapped in our towels in the shelter of a beached boat, to protect ourselves from the stinging sand, which was whipped up by heavy wind. We didn't half moan...

Activities in Mimosa included all sorts of watersports on the sea, none of which revealed my deeply hidden sporting abilities. On the contrary, I showed myself up as a big pansy when we took a ride on the banana boat called "The Big Willy". We noticed early on that the left hand stabiliser tube was less inflated, and was causing us to fall off on sharp corners - and hitting the water was like hitting a brick wall, and then sinking into the cold. At this point too, I had a morbid fear of the sea, so god knows why I'd even agreed to get on the damn thing. Ryan didn't help by attempting to "steer" or something by dipping his foot in the water - an act which invariably flipped us over. The end result was that I was reduced to a gibbering wreck, and got into the speedboat - thus making the ride even more uncomfortable for the others on the (now lighter) banana boat from Hell.

A more pleasurable aquatic experience was our visit to the nearby water park, where we spent an afternoon swimming and throwing ourselves down unfeasibly high water chutes. Somehow, Frances and I spent the whole afternoon pretty much on our own, which accounts for the large number of pictures I have of her from this occasion.

So that was Sunsport. Two (?) weeks of sun and sea in the south of France with me mates. Not half bad. And I even got a tan, which is a neat trick for me.