Ici Ryder!

It has romance written all over it... Paris and golf’s greatest team contest. Eddie Coffey channelled his inner Rory McIlroy by playing the championship course. So how did he fare?

IT sounds like cheesy central. We are cruising down the River Seine enjoying a fourcourse meal, as you do, on a lovely summer’s evening. Then there’s a bit of a to-do a few tables away and next you know there’s a guy down on one knee about to give himself the ultimate life sentence; he’s proposing to his darling girlfriend.

The whole place goes wild with the excitement of it all… clearly most people have been enjoying the excellent wines on board the Bateaux Parisiens restaurant boat. The romance bred contagion. No sooner had the excitement calmed down than another poor soul was popping the question in another corner as the Champs Élysées looked down on us gliding by.

I pitied the poor geezer who missed his chance and was third in the line-up of proposers.

At that stage we were all getting a bit tired of the starry-eyed soppiness.

Then again, if you’re going to parade

your love so publicly, Paris is one of the few places you’ll get away with it.

We’re in the City of Love looking forward to the Ryder Cup golf contest which kicks off there on Friday.

For the golfing philistines, this is the biennial contest in which Europe play America over three days. Le Golf National is hosting this year’s bout.

Those of us into sporting drama and golfing theatre in particular can’t wait.

The prospect of performing on a course where it’s played is one of those bucket-list events.

It also hosts the annual French Open and is one of the most difficult tests of this frustrating game you’re likely to come across.

Romance and golf, for many people, would not be the most palatable of cocktails for a few days away, but they can both co-exist quite nicely in France.

WITH the world’s eyes (or at least those of a sporting persuasion) trained on Le Golf National next week for one of the most watched TV spectacles in the calendar, taking a few days away in Paris will be tempting for many people.

Not traditionally in the first rung of potential golf locations, France boasts more than 500 courses and at least 40 of those in the greater Paris region.

We’re staying at the very central and quite luxurious Novotel Paris les Halles… close enough to unbeatable in terms of a city-centre location… a 20-minute stroll to the Musee d’Orsay and a 12-minute metro (from your doorstep, virtually) to the Champs Élysées.

As a way to while away an evening, be well fed and watered and get to see a host of the most famous sites in one of the most famous cities in the world, then the cruising restaurant is highly recommended.

We travelled in the evening and the city looks really spectacular as you glide by.

The trip will show you a host of famous sites many of which you may well decide to visit in the cold light of day when there’s no golf to be played… Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower and many more.

For those of us of a slightly lazier persuasion, seeing those places with a glass of red wine in hand makes for a far more palatable view.

But, of course, at least some of these will have to be seen close up as well.