I've just begun writing up the return leg of my road trip - a four day journey through France in my Ferrari F355 with my good friend Tom Jelley - and I was reminded how good a driving road the Route Napoleon was.

The journey home was simply never going to be as interesting as the earlier stages of the trip. That ten day period allowed me to experience some of the many must-do experiences for petrolheads and I enjoyed it as much as I hoped I would. But the prospect of driving up through France didn't excite me in the same way and the motorsport-related activities I had enquired about had come to nothing. Thankfully there was the Route Napoleon to look forward to.

I had first heard of this road through evo magazine. They have organised a lot of their group tests here and for good reason. It has everything you could want to enjoy a high performance car. The roads are wide, well-surfaced and have an excellent combination of straights and challenging corners. It doesn't seem to be very busy either, even though you might find yourself stuck behind a caravan on a section of hairpin corners.

It is also stunning to look at. The road climbs from the French Riviera and runs all the way to Grenoble at the base of the French Alps, the scenery shifting as you go. Like some of the better roads I have driven you don't have to drive like a maniac to enjoy it but there are plenty of opportunities to see what your car can do should that be of interest. There are challenging sections, hairpins, imposing rock-faces, and long, open winding sections. It has it all. It ranks of one of my favourite roads from the whole trip and is well worth a detour if you find yourself with an extra day to play with on your way through France.

I won't give too much away here but here's a short (low quality) video clip showing a pretty typical section of the Route Napoleon. Excuse the background music.

I've had a pretty good month on the car and driving front and it all started with me being reunited with my car on French soil.

I had left my Ferrari F355 Berlinetta in the south of France for a couple of months following my road trip through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. I had been really missing having it during the summer months and the prospect of the drive back through France was fairly mouth-watering, particularly as I had included Route Napoleon in the itinerary. First though, I wanted to ensure that the car was running without issue after two months without use and luckily for me the Col de Vence was only a few miles from where I was staying.

The Col de Vence is a road that will be familiar to readers of evo magazine as a favourite place for group tests. It is certainly a challenging road, with frequent blind corners and hairpins to catch out the foolish. But it is a fun road as well, particularly if you are willing to do a few runs and learn the corners better.

At first it climbs inland through an endless array of hairpins over quite barren landscape. The views are great, particularly when you catch a glimpse of the bright blue Mediterranean behind you. The fun really begins when it levels out a little and the road opens up with more straights and better sighted corners. It dips down through tree-lined hills and passes sheer rock faces; sometimes the landscape seems perfectly designed for deflecting the sound of the car right back at you. You have to beware of the few other motorists and the eager cyclists but for much of the time the road seems deserted.

I took it pretty easy but still enjoyed myself. The Ferrari seemed ideal for these roads, particularly compared with the Bentley Continental GTC that I once tried down here which was simply too wide. That said, a good hot hatch would have been as much, if not more fun than my F355.

I stopped at Chateau Saint Martin for a drink on the way back down. It's pricey but the building, grounds and views are all stunning and I can recommend it. The car ran perfectly and all that was left to do was enjoy the sunshine for a couple of days before heading north via Grenoble, Dijon and Reims.

This short clip shows the final couple of minutes as we approach the top of Col de la Bonette before stopping to enjoy the spectacular views.

I want to share a couple of short video clips to give you an idea of the drive up the Col de la Bonette in France. It was truly stunning yet felt so remote that you could have been in almost any country in the world.

This first one is about ten minutes away from the summit, by which point we have already climbed a significant altitude in a short space of time.

In many ways I've been a bit reluctant to write about the final day of driving on this section of the road trip, I think because I was similarly reluctant for the trip to end. It's amazingly exciting to get up every morning and set off on roads you've never travelled to places that you've never been. Doing so in a Ferrari further adds to that feeling and throws in a good dose of adrenaline at times too. It's a car that keeps you on your toes and sucks you into the driving process, seemingly even when you're in the passenger seat.

I had high hopes for the Col de la Bonette, if you'll excuse the pun. As the highest road in Europe it was sure to be spectacular and our excellent experience driving across the Fluela Pass had shown us how good mountain roads could be. By contrast, we had been very disappointed to find that the Stelvio Pass was still shut due to snow and ice on the road and had been some ten days early for its opening. I was sure to do my research properly this time and discovered that the Col was open.

Once you turn off the main road at Jausiers the road quickly starts to climb and, before you know it, you are faced with hairpin after hairpin, with butterfly-inducing drops to the side. It became clear very quickly that this would be no drivers' road and would not compare to the enjoyment of the previous couple of hours from an out-and-out driving perspective. Once you realise that you can just settle back, take it easy and enjoy the spectacular scenery.

It really is stunning up there and, at the time we were there, still very much covered in snow aside from the roads which had been ploughed recently, creating huge glacial-looking banks in sections. You just seem to climb and climb, onwards and upwards, wondering if it is ever going to come to a summit. Of course it does eventually, once you've passed some brave cyclists and the obligatory motorbike parade, the road reaching an altitude of 2,715 metres. There is another small road that goes around the peak and goes a little higher still but it was still snow-covered at the time.

Photos taken and driver switch-over completed and we were soon heading down the other side towards the Cote D'Azur. This section of the road seemed to have been more affected by rocks and gravel having either fallen off the mountain or been carried by melting snow. Either way it meant stopping at least once to move rocks out of the road so that we could continue downwards and back towards some greenery.

Much like earlier in the day, we soon found that the roads on this side of the Col de la Bonette were better for actual driving despite the fact we had assumed they were simply a means to an end. The roads that run past the ski town of Isola and on, down valleys that follow the river Var to the sea were some of the best experienced in the whole trip. They were beautiful, generally well-surfaced, varied and almost deserted. The fact that this route was scattered with tunnels gave us plenty of chance to really enjoy the wailing sound of the F355 as we pushed through each of the gears to 8,250rpm where the car's peak power of 380bhp is delivered.

Before we knew it, we were back amongst the Sunday traffic and seeing signs for places we knew. Thirty minutes later we switched off the engine for the last time and went for a beer.