My first experience of Serious Cheese was on a family holiday - in the mid sixties we used to drive down through France to a rented villa in Spain, taking three days on the drive down and three days on the drive back. We stayed in some characterful hotels, and in one of these I still remember a muttered conversation between my Dad and a waiter, on the grounds of "unchain the vintage cheese". A huge wheel of cheese was brought in, and slices of it distributed to us all. It was a decidedly adult taste, but a sign of things to come.
My other significant memory was when I lived in France, in Lyon, and up the road from my tiny apartment was a cheese shop which has never been surpassed in my foodie experience. There were all manner of treasures, and a personal favourite was the unpasteurised Camembert. I took one home to Wales one Christmas, travelling to the Channel in a friend's well-heated car and then from Southampton to home by train. People cleared seats for me on the train, obviously thinking I was very ill. I reached my parents' house when they were out, but they knew I was there because the cheese had left scent trails that even a nose-less person would spot. By Christmas Day it had been exiled to the garden shed as it had tainted almost everything in the fridge. Oh, but it tasted good!