MAKE a mental list of the ideal car for a couple of weeks - and nearly 2,000 miles - of motoring through France and you would probably not put a Land Rover Discovery at the top.

Too big, too thirsty and not much fun to drive might be your leading demerits as you mentally pencilled in something much smaller and more sensible.

Well, I would have done precisely the same before clambering up (and it is a bit of climb) into the Discovery's cockpit. But I would have been wrong in the most pleasantly surprising of ways...

For starters, it's not too big. A tape measure shows the Discovery looks bigger than it is. For instance, a Vauxhall Insignia Tourer estate is longer than this solidly built off-roader and only a couple of inches less wide.

And the Discovery comes with a couple of advantages that other 4x4s tend to share and which makes owners love them for their surprising everyday practicality.

Building them tall and square makes them easier to steer a path through both urban jungle and the real thing, should you go off-roading in deepest Borneo.

Then, thanks to an optional £740 pack on the test car, a clever tweak with a couple of tiny cameras made things easier still. They show where the front wheels are in relation to the kerb, so approaching a French autoroute toll booth on the 'wrong side' was a simple matter of keeping an eye on the dashboard screen.

Bright sunlight sometimes blotted out the image but mostly it worked well and saved potential contact between the Discovery's handsome (and expensive) 20in alloy wheels and hard bits of roadside France.

So, the car did not feel too big. Certainly not too big for all the luggage two people need (apparently) for a couple of weeks in France, which almost filled the huge boot but left enough space for a stop at Calais for - you've guessed - a box or two of wine.

Not too big to fit comfortably into the giant hold of P&O's Spirit of Britain which took us across the Channel and back and made the journey feel like a proper holiday.

Then, to the thirst of the engine which has to pull one of the heaviest cars you can buy. The Discovery's immense off-road strength is down in part to a chassis built like a tank and the whole caboodle weighs an immense 2,570kg - or more than two-and-a-half times the weight of a Ford Fiesta.

That means the 3.0-litre diesel has to work for a living, which made the 31.6mpg recorded over more than 1,900 miles of holiday travel look the right side of reasonable. Factor in the cheapness of diesel in France, at about 82p a litre and the Discovery was hitting a UK wallet at the equivalent of about 43 miles to the gallon. Result, I'd say.

The engine also contributes to the easy-going nature of the car, slurring smoothly through the eight-speed automatic gearbox and providing the sort of mid-range pull that could easily surprise a dawdling Frenchman (and did, once or twice).

Riding high and carrying all that weight is no recipe for grand prix-style road manners but the Discovery made mincemeat of the deliciously empty and smoothly surfaced highways of France - and side roads almost comically good to explore in comparison to poor pockmarked, overloaded Britain.

Two more aids to stress free jaunts abroad are found by digging gently into the dashboard display where, with a few clicks of the button on the steering wheel, the digital speed display switches to kilometres an hour and the headlights set themselves to dip on the 'French' side of the road.