“The road is life” – Jack Kerouac. The devil is not as black as he is painted. Particularly if the ‘devil’ is French and is better known as ‘le diable’.
We came close to cancelling this trip only days before it was due to start. France was being reportedly paralysed by protests against President Macron’s pension reform. According to some reports, the protests would often turn violent, with cars, and occasionally even campervans, overturned and set on fire.
That last bit was a particular put off for us (my wife, myself and our dog Tashi), for that was exactly how we were planning to travel across the whole of France – in a converted ‘grey import’ Toyota Alphard, nicknamed Alphie, familiar to E&T readers from my previous After All columns. The aim of the journey was a brief reunion with my relatives from Kyiv (including a 90-year-old auntie), who had fled war-torn Ukraine and found refuge in Marseille.
On top of the protests, there were rumours of severe...