So, we’ve been to a wedding in a small village in France. We’re supposed to be making our way home but the satnav in the car seems unwilling to actually let us leave the country.  To the extent that we’re on an unpaved single-track road cutting through farmland somewhere near the French-Italian border and I’m beginning to suspect the technology is failing us

Caroline suggested we take the Mont Blanc tunnel, but I preferred the idea of the Little St Bernard Pass. It’ll be fun, I said. Very scenic. Mountains. Valleys. Snow. Terrifying hairpin bends and roads that plummet two thousand metres to the valley below (I might not have mentioned that). Also, much cheaper (I did mention that).

But so far the navigation system has guided us up the first five hundred metres of a two kilometre climb before suggesting we make a U-turn after taking the wrong turn in the road. Following which it takes us all the way back down again. We try again. We take the other road. We end up in a car park where the only other exit has a warning that the road is passable only with extreme caution in a four wheel drive vehicle. We’re in a Fiat Panda. 

We start again although the navigation system seems to enjoy guiding us into people’s driveways, and we’ve passed the same stretch of roadworks so many times that the workers are starting to seem like old friends.

By now we’re both thinking that maybe the Mont Blanc tunnel is the better option, Caroline is biting back on the words “I told you so” and I’m prepared to give the Pass up as a bad idea.

The trouble is there’s a road closure which means there’s no easy way of getting back the way we’ve already come, and hence no way of actually getting to the tunnel from where we are without some sort of basic navigational aid like, oh I don’t know, an actual physical map or something.

Like it or not, we’re going to have to have another go. Which is how we end up driving through farmland on a dirt-track road in a Fiat Panda. There is, I’m informed, another 1.5 kilometres before we hit a proper road. 

There is no possibility of doing a three point turn. I have no confidence at all in my ability to reverse all the way back. I’m expecting a farmer with a gun to appear. I’m counting down every single remaining metre. At any moment I expect the track to simply end. 

And then, mercifully, we hit a road. An actual, proper, paved road. I don’t know if it’s the right road but by now I don’t care. It’s a road, leading upwards, and that’s all that matters.

A note on the Little St Bernard Pass. On the Italian side, the roads are lined with thick, stout wooden beams backed by steel girders. On the French side, there might be the occasional brick wall, barely half a metre in height. Or, more likely, there may be nothing at all between you and a swift descent to the valley below.

There’s the occasional posse of bikers hooning around and evidently having a good time, and people in terrifyingly expensive cars going at even more terrifying speeds. I am from Venice, I barely drive anymore, I am in a Fiat Panda and right now I really, really want to be in the Mont Blanc Tunnel.

We climb and climb and climb and, yes, the views really are spectacular. And then we’re at what once would have been the France/Italy border. Caroline suggests we go out and kiss the ground. She’s half-joking. I think.

Courmayeur lies 2000m below us. Strong drinks and dinner await. We’re overtaken by a man on a moped at one point on the descent, but that’s okay. We’re happy to take the slow route…

The Little St Bernard Pass is usually open from May to October. It is a genuinely spectacular drive. Do, however, be sure to have a map with you.