As someone who was exposed to heavy doses of country music and the entire Smokey and the Bandit opus at an impressionable age, I have always believe in the romance of "the open road"; in "putting the hammer down" to get to "the chicken coop" before "smokey" pulls you over for "using trucker slang in an inane manner".

So when the folks at Skills Holidays, the Nottingham company specialising in coach holidays, offered me a chance to drive their swish new 48-foot "Signature" coach, I responded in the only way you really can to an offer like that: "that's a big ten-four, good buddy".

Of course, the Skills people wisely kept me as far away from the open road as they possibly could, preferring to keep me on the closed and remote road while driving their £235,000 coach. Specifically, I headed out to Langar Airfield, where Skills driver Peter Cooper was on hand to give me my test run.

Now let me admit right up front that I'm a fan of overland travel, partially since we are now told on a regular basis taking a cheap flight to anywhere is roughly the moral equivalent of strangling a puppy with piano wire.

I also prefer the tarmac route for nostalgic reasons. I grew up in a motorhoming family, and every summer we'd pack up and head out across America in one of those huge hunks of Detroit lunacy in which "camping" becomes the sort of activity best attempted with a diverse collection of films for the built-in VCR.

In fact, my only previous experience behind the wheel of something massive came on one of the last family trips, when we were on a four-lane highway in a part of Missouri known for its flatness and I convinced my dad that now would be a good time to let me have a go behind the wheel.

Within minutes of me taking over, the Ozark Mountains, which had apparently been hiding behind some corn, shot up all around us. The road went from four lanes to two and the motorhome was suddenly on a steep, winding decline with me wrestling the steering wheel and my dad, a driving instructor, talking me through it in the soothing "Now, let's not get too excited about all this imminent death" tones often associated with Nasa mission control officers when there's just been a loud "bang" on the space shuttle.

Eventually we found a place where I could pull over and pry my fingers out of the ruts I'd squeezed into the steering wheel. And that was the last time I drove something larger than a standard microwave oven. Until last week.

Peter the driver sat me behind the wheel and explained everything. And I've got to admit, this is a pretty smooth ride. The leather passengers' seats are done "theatre" style so you can stare out the front window instead of at the back of the head of the person in front of you, unless you're purposely glaring at the back of the head of the person in front of you in a passive-aggressive attempt to make him stop slamming the back of his seat into your legs.

The driver also gets a lot of cool options, many of which Peter explained to me, although the only ones I really understood were the camera that pops out the back when you put it in reverse, and the dashboard button that looks like a cup of coffee. (It turns on the coffee-maker. And the rest of the on-board kitchen.)

Peter really got into explaining all the coach's features relating to things like turning radius, so I didn't have the heart to point out that for all my automotive acumen you might as well tell me that Volvo's installed a magical Turning Radius Gnome.

My actual driving excursion mostly involved circles around a makeshift course. (Okay, some partially burnt tyres left at the airfield.) The turning radius was so good that I didn't even crash into a fence once, which is saying something.

Sadly, the gate to the runway bits of Langar was locked. I considered revving it up, crashing it through the gate and making a run for the A46. But I reckoned that great road trip films rarely include a bottleneck at a roundabout near Newark. So I'll let Peter continue to handle the driving.

But if Skills ever installs CB radios, I could definitely help with that. Over and out, little buddy.