The irony is that these fabrics are almost all imported, while Roubaix returns to its roots in the Flanders fields.”On ne triomphe de la nature qu’en lui obeissant,” as Francis Bacon is quoted in the museum – “We can triumph over nature only by obeying her.”La Piscine Mus?d’Art et d’Industrie (00 33 3 20 69 23 60) opens 11am-6pm from Tuesday to Thursday, 11am-8pm on Friday and 1-6pm at weekends Admission €3 (£2).. It’s not every day an armed chef cooks your dinner. But this was 8,000ft up in Idaho’s White Cloud wilderness on a riding and fishing trip, with a bear on the prowl. In our absence it had invaded camp, littering the mess tent with debris in its efforts to find food.

Not even a bag of barbecue coal had escaped its attentions: sooty paw prints stencilled the canvas floor

It’s not every day an armed chef cooks your dinner. Now, faced with the possibility of an unwelcome ursine encounter, the powerful Magnum 45 pistol hugging the cook’s hip was overwhelmingly reassuring.Darkness brought a heightened sense of paranoia. The sign at the trailhead car park, telling of recent black bear attacks on humans, now seemed more like a prediction than a mandatory safety warning. In the shadowy light of the Tilly lamp, we maintained a wary silence Then came the growl. The cook, gun in hand, leapt out of the tent with Rob and myself in pursuit like children following the Pied Piper A thorough inspection revealed no sign of our furry friend. Nevertheless, we opted for the safety-in-numbers approach that night, and piled into the same tent.This mountain expedition formed part of a tailor-made “His ‘n’ Hers” holiday put together by a specialist tour company. Such an arrangement caters for couples with disparate recreational needs and for whom compromise is an alien concept.

It gave Rob the chance to mainline his particular passion, fly-fishing, while I was able to ride horses. Separate daytime pursuits were followed by evenings spent at comfortable ranches and lodges, where good food and wine created the right ambience for reassembling a relationship.And why Idaho? Only one of our friends grew animated at the mention of this north-western US state, citing its prolific potato production as a point in its favour. She exhorted me to smuggle out a spud for seed crop purposes, but, uncertain of the merits of founding a potato empire, I passed up.Tubers aside, Idaho offers awesome mountain ranges, teeming rivers, waterfalls, alpine lakes, canyons, immense forests and an abundance of wildlife: bears, moose (they actually kill more people than bears), elk, antelope, cougar, big-horn sheep and bald eagles Only Alaska can top Idaho’s 18 million untamed acres. If some people carry guns, it’s due to the unpredictable nature of wild beasts, not because of a human threat. There are still places in Idaho where people don’t bother locking their doors.Way back in 1896, Idaho became the fourth state in the nation to give women the right to vote. That spirit of social justice still prevails – 114 human rights organisations operate in Idaho.

Recently one of them raised $25,000 to buy classroom materials for teaching about diversity and human rights.Parts of the state are slick with money. Around Ketchum, Ernest Hemingway’s last staging post, it’s no big deal to see private jets flying in. Pockets of casual sophistication slot in alongside cranky frontier towns, some no more than a collection of dilapidated shacks huddled alongside a dirt road. The kind of place where you might see a dusty station wagon bearing the sticker “I LOVE CATS – they taste like chicken”.