“It is of course a commonplace to say that France is diverse to the point of absurdity,” Fernand Braudel, France’s leading 20th-century historian noted in his book ‘The Identity of France’.
Having recently completed a 2,000km coast-to-coast drive across that country, the purpose and the beginning of which were described in my previous column, I couldn’t agree more. France’s mosaic of landscapes is surprisingly versatile – from the vast plains of the north to the meadows of the Loire valley, the hills of Provence and the snow-capped peaks of the Alps.
And yet, alongside this amazing variance, there exists one gratifying sameness – the never-changing uniformity of French national ‘autoroutes’. After several hours of driving, your fast-moving vehicle (in my case, a campervan converted Toyota Alphard nicknamed Alphie) starts feeling like a stationary carousel figure, with changing landscapes spinning around it endlessly. The other constantly evolving feature...