RELUCTANT motorist climbed into a Volvo estate, and emerged three days later relieved...and rather surprised.

Would I, asked the PR man, mind driving one of the cars on our trip from Dover to the First World War battlefields of Arras in northern France?

I’m not a good driver and don’t enjoy driving. I do it because I have to. But I do know northern France, and Arras is an old favourite, and it would have been churlish to refuse.

Which is why I agreed, and some days later parked my little Focus in Dover and looked across the P&O forecourt at the Volvo XC70 Sport model.

I felt like a dinghy tying up alongside an aircraft carrier. It probably had a turning circle the circumference of Wembley, and stopping distance measured in days rather than feet. Oh dear.

Getting in was easy, though I was loath to adjust the seat as there seemed to be more directional buttons than dimensions: there was backwards, forwards, up, down, and then more, which had me worried.

The problems were obvious: it was far larger than my Focus, and I’m lousy at judging distances. It was an automatic, and under stress I was obviously going to throw out a questing left foot in search of the clutch and smack down on the brake.

We were driving in convoy, which has you jumping red lights, cutting up other cars and staring in the rear view mirror far too much. And while the rest of the party knocked back the wine in Langan’s brasserie on board P&O, I endured a Diet Coke.

Thankfully, cars have come a long, long way in design. Just as programming Sky Plus can be done by any adult - where it needed a geek to programme the video - so some cars are now user friendly, built for the every-day, nothing-special motorist.

This Volvo is the opposite of the Tardis. From the outside it is a an aircraft carrier. From the inside, it’s a cosy compact. I felt I was driving a car, not a carrier.

It turns as lightly and niftily as a hatchback. The vision is excellent, the diesel engine responds well, and the controls are laid out in a familiar patter, though it takes us some time to master the CD player.

If a stuffed hamster could drive France’s empty motorways without a care, Arras had other challenges.

As the light faded towards teatime, to that state of dusk where lights do more harm than good, and Arras began to fill with commuters heading home, we got into trouble.

Our Arras PR had confidently headed our convoy (now three cars long) towards a car park by the main rail station. Only it was closed and our convoy, me last, was stuck nose to tail, across three lanes of a rapidly congesting roundabout.

The reverse lights on the lead car came on and I realised I was going to have to reverse this inflammable supertanker into a throng of French drivers, pulling back across three lanes, and two slip roads to allow my colleagues room to get out and head on towards the correct car park.

At times like this you do not want to be distracted from collision avoidance by any funny little quirks an unfamiliar car may present.

The Volvo has no funny little quirks. It does what it is told without demur. Because of that, maybe because of its size, and partly because the French expect the Brits to drive like idiots, we succeed in our manoeuvre.

If anything it handled even easier than my Focus, And I made no worse a hash of parking it straight than I do my Ford.

There are a few bells and whistles that annoy the minimalist: it bleats annoyingly when the seat belt isn’t engaged, and when reversing in tight-ish spaces. And the volume control on the wheel is just where I rest the fleshy base of my thumb, suddenly cranking out Sylvie Vartan at 100 decibels which is paralysingly terrifying, hearing a French backing group shrieking Do Ze Locomotion in Monsters of Rock mode.

On the plus side, the lights come on immediately, which is one less button to fumble for. And it threaded its way around roundabouts, wooshed past trucks, and slipped through winding villages with such confidence it might have been used to me for years.

It has real space. We had weekend luggage for three in the boot, and still plenty of room for our raid on the Majestic wine store in Calais.

We parted where we had met, at the P&O office, with more regret than I had expected. Like a good PR, the Volvo XC70 is a real smoothy: it makes you look good, and is exceedingly discreet about any of your mistakes and shortcomings.

FACTFILE

Volvo XC70 range

2.5T AWD and D5 AWD

PRICE: £30,320 and £30,050

C02 EMISSIONS: (D5)

PERFORMANCE: Max Speed (six-speed Geartronic) 127mph / 0-62mph 10s

FUEL CONSUMPTION: (combined) 33.2mpg