You should only get stopped in FR if you break the road rules, as is the case in the UK. And if you are, you can expect to be addressed in FR, at least to start the conversation. Should all "foreign" drivers that use UK roads have a good command of English I wonder........! You may be aware that the speed limit in the back roads has now been reduced to 80 KPH. I suggest that the Police have better things to do at the moment than worry about such detail.

I've a smattering of French, German and Spanish but whenever I try to use them the natives find my murdering of their language so bad they quickly respond in English.

10 years or so ago we were driving on a remote country road in the Auvergne when I realised that we had left our passports behind in the gite, half-an-hour's drive away.

Whilst debating whether to turn round and head back (incidentally you should always carry your passport when travelling in France - unless you've got a French identity card), we turned a corner into a tiny hamlet, only to find 2 gendarmes standing in the road signalling us to stop.

We were asked to produce our ID, and my heart sank ... however I did have the V5 and insurance certificate in the car, so produced these and presented them to stall for time whilst I tried to think of how to explain our lack of passports. Fortunately the gendarmes were so pre-occupied in attempting to make sense of the V5 that they forgot all about asking again for our passports!

On many occasions when we've been stopped at a controle, where les flics stake out a roundabout usually to breathalyse every driver, as soon as they spot us in a rhd car they wave us through, either they think that brits are teetotal, or my reputation for incomprehensible french pronunciation is well known!