"You don’t want to get an ugly one,” as the old joke has it about a group of sex-starved desert visitors sprinting in the direction of relief when a camel train appears over the horizon. And I suppose, as dromedaries go, mine was as handsome as any. Placid, too, which was just as well since I was going to be astride its back for over an hour in my first experience of camel riding.

As it turned out, things went swimmingly. My 20-year-old mount behaved impeccably on our ride into the Sahara, though I would have been happy not to have been left quite so much in charge of the beast. With trainer Abdul’s guiding rope in my hands for most of the trip, I had worrying visions of a sudden uncontrollable bolt.

I can’t pretend, however, that riding a camel, while definitely the highlight of my seven-day holiday in Tunisia last week, is a very comfortable business. One’s legs – as can perhaps be judged from the picture on the right – are spread rather too widely across the creature’s back. It hurt at the time, and it continued to hurt for three days afterwards as a consequence of strain on some previously under-used muscles. Getting on and off is far from easy either, there being three distinct stages to the camel’s rising and descent, each one of which threatens to unseat the jockey.

One of my fellow riders said it was seeing such mishaps on TV’s You’ve Been Framed that tempted her to take the trip. Aren’t folks odd?

But the blazing desert heat of over 40 degrees, which I feared would be a problem, was satisfactorily dealt with by the protective clothing. As we wobbled oasis-wards I remarked to Rosemarie that there was less trouble from the heat than we had endured the day before we left on a journey to London aboard an Oxford Tube coach with malfunctioning – I suspect not properly switched on – air-conditioning equipment. What is it with we Brits and weather? Our return journey was two hours delayed because it had rained, causing floods near Marble Arch.

A storm of what seemed to me monumental proportions – black skies, clouds of sand, torrential rain – occurred as we made our way back from the desert to our hotel in Sousse. Our guide didn’t even mention it. Par for the course, I suppose.

At other times during the two-day, 700-mile trip he had been suitably loquacious and informative about the many splendid sights we saw. These included the waterfall at Chebika, the sun over the salt desert en route to Douz (where the camel ride was accomplished), sunrise across the salt lakes of Chott El Jerid (we had to be up at 4am, off at 5am, to witness that!) and the exterior of the Grand Mosque in Kairouan, the fourth holiest city in the Islamic world.

Those interested in league tables might like to know (might already know) that the Colisseum-like structure at Al Djem, wwhich we also visited, is the world’s third largest Roman amphitheatre. Many a Christian martyr met his maker there. The stadium served as an inspiration for the set design of the film Gladiator.

On the subject of movies, we also saw the canyon at Tamerza, where The English Patient was shot, and caves at Matmata that figured in Star Wars.

On another trip earlier in the week (I am definitely not a beach man on holidays) we saw the ruins of the Antonine Baths (right) at Carthage and the wonderful Roman mosaics in Tunis’s Bardo Museum.

In all, a week to remember.