Travelling with a baby and a dog requires careful planning as neither will tell you when they need to go to the toilet. You need to plan ahead and work out places to stop to give the dog a chance to do his business and the baby a chance to check a nappy and change it, if required.

We were driving to Ullapool and planned to stop at the Kessock Bridge in Inverness. There’s a toilet block there, so it was a good place to stop, as we thought it was bound to have a baby changing room. We were wrong. It didn’t. It also didn’t have any bins outside. So, when Barney the Schnauzer did his business in the car park, we picked it up, bagged it and had to carry it with us as we looked for somewhere to change Infant TwinBikeRun.

It was sunny and we decided we’d change her on a mat on the grass at the side of the car park. As Mrs TwinBikeRun started setting everything up I said, “There’s bound to be a bin in the toilet. I’ll take Barney’s bag and drop it in there.”

I was wrong.

There were no bins in the toilet just as there were no nearby bins in the car park. So, I did what any man does when he goes to the toilet. I went to the toilet. It’s impossible to stand in a loo without thinking you need to go to to the loo too. I went into a cubicle. I went to the toilet. I came out of the toilet and I bumped into a man who’d just walked in.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

He looked at my bag. Barney’s bag, which I was carrying in front of me like a waiter presenting a bottle of wine to the table.

And all I could think, as I carried a bag of poo out of a toilet, just as a man walked in on me carrying a bag of poo out of the toilet, was to try and offer some sort of explanation that would show him that I’m not a weirdo who went fishing in toilet bowls and carried his poo back home like a goldfish won at the fair.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

And what I said, made it a whole worse. Because what’s worse than walking into a toilet and coming face to face with a man carrying his own poo out of a toilet.

All I could say was “It’s not mine!!!”