The driving, I could tell from the start, was going to be controversial. It began in quick succession with a smashed traffic cone, a close shave with an unwary pedestrian and the grisly murder of an entire family of voles, who, it must be admitted, clearly had the right of way. This all transpired less than 100 yards from the Budget car hire lot at Heathrow, approximately 90 seconds into a road trip with my friend Dan, a media executive in Hammersmith whose approach to driving is like that of an escaped convict fleeing the authorities. It is no small miracle then that, after negotiating several harrowing roundabouts, with the satnav barking at us in German, Dan somehow managed to pilot our Peugeot 307 coupe cabriolet – its grille now resplendent with rodent carcasses – on to the M25 and aim us north without further casualties.

So commenced day three of our week-long “man-cation” (Dan’s term), which had brought me from New York City – that gravel-pit of human indignity I call home – to the great city of London and (if we survived the journey) to the famous glades and woodlands of pastoral England. Our agenda was partly educational. Just as Simon Schama and Stephen Fry had recently toured our embattled country in an attempt (probably misguided) to better comprehend it, so Dan and I would travel the highways of England to seek in the shadows of another declining empire a picture of its contemporary self.