Twenty-two miles. It might as well be twenty-two million miles for all the cultural similarity.
It was with a very Toad-like 'Poop poop!' that I drove out of the port of Calais. Having spent almost two hours to get from home to meet the rest of the party at the east end of the District Line - largely sitting in a cab on Tower Bridge Road watching the meter going tickety tock until getting out to walk - French roads were a delight.
80mph down the autoroute is like sitting in one's drawing room. (One understands why the continentals are so keen on having cruise control on their motors. On most British roads it makes driving harder work rather than easier work, requiring either a rather bizarre in-and-out of lanes approach, or else frantic use of the paddles on the steering wheel.) Relaxed, comfortable, nary another car in sight. Merely the occasional stop to hand over a couple of shillings to the nice girl in the Péage booth - it looks like Monopoly money too.
But what of the cars that are in sight? The French have always had non-catholic taste in the shape of cars they design & drive. Not for them the ubiquitous German- or Japanese-box, with indefinite curves & generally pleasing on the eye. Recall for a moment, if you will, pre-war Citroens with their strange boxy shape & their intruiging yet tempting aerodynamic shape. Nothing changes. The roads are crammed full of such delights as the new Megane. Allegedly Europe's most popular car, it is clear that most of them are in La Belle France. Boxy and inelegant, with a behind like a fishwife, but unmistakeably French, French, French. The Kangoo - such a practical motor, no doubt with roots in the 2CV van. But in style? - unmistakeably French - and noticeably unpopular on British roads.
The baguette, delivered in rural regions by van, invariably comes in a motor unrecogniseable on British roads - the white van with windows at the side in the back. UK VAT regulations prohibit the reclaiming of VAT on vehicles with side windows behind the driver's seat, so such vehicles - strange to our eyes - do not exist in Britain.
To be fair, the continentals have rather more than their fair share of bizarre looking motors. There's some sort of a big sit-up-and-beg Fiat, with funny headlights by the wingmirrors, that looks like something out of a Dr Who movie. It might suit Mrs Patently. And the Fiat Marea Weekend - words fail me, but not the French.
Poop poop!, the miles disappear under the wheels. 80mph all the way, legally, on cheap petrol (relatively!) with the mirror-smooth roads to ourselves. The rest of the party had come down the M6 toll road during the Friday-morning rush hour and had noted no traffic worth mentioning, so were already in the autoroute mood, delighted to spare a few ha'pennies for the privilege of car-free motoring. Sadly Red Ken's prices in London are not high enough for the tax to be anything more than a tax.
Off the autoroute, the story is just as good. We are -surprisingly - completely out of season (booked direct with Gites de France, a Gite during May costs as little per head for the week as HJ reported a recent 1984 Polo with 6 weeks' MOT at auction) so there isn't a single other British car nearby. So we have the roads to ourselves, apart from the occasional French maniac with a liberal approach to overtaking.
Overtaking; now there is a word that does not feature much on this forum. There is never any traffic, so despite the handicap of right-hand drive, drop a gear and you're past the tractor. Even if it is a 147. More vehicles overtaken in a week in France than in a year on British roads.
What of the vehicles that are overtaken? It is very heartening to see Bangernomics taken to extremes in France. Renault 4, monseiur? Pas de probleme. I 'ave zees verrry nice Renault 4; une veritable museum vehicle; rust libre; dodgy respray, mais beaucoup de years old, and still running. Un Pugeot 203 (I think it was). Un little bit of motoring history really, yet still being used on a daily basis.
Sadly all good things come to an end, and the M2 marked that. Laden gently with some prime French wines from a supermarket, we returned. Top tip, the Cora I went shopping in (in Vesoul - French supermarkets seem to leave a lot of wine buying to local buyers) had a superb selection of wines from the south east and south west of France at 8 to 12 Euros. Lots of bottle age (up to a decade), some serious wines giving any claret I saw for sale (this was not a wine-buying trip) a very good run for its money. For instance Corbieres, Cahors, Bandol, Faugeres - some quite extraordinary vins de garde which had been made in an old-fashioned way and given sufficient time to show how they could develop.
Wished you were all there.
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