In reply to Mr Beyer I think he has got his sums wrong. I don’t think much has changed in France since I was there in October and certainly hasn’t since a friend went in January.
I think he has got his euros and his pounds mixed up. I know the pound has had a bit of a kicking against the euro lately but I always equate what it costs in the good old UK in pounds to the same amount in euros.
For example I put £50 of fuel in my car on the UK side to fill it and 50 euros on the French side to fill the same car which at the end of October equated to £35. If fuel had gone up that much since October I think the French would be out protesting.
As for the charges on toll roads where did you go from in Normandy? We drove from Boulogne to Martel - about 470 miles - and it didn’t cost us a fraction of the £50 you paid.
Yes, things have got a little dearer over there in the past 12 months, but it has got a lot dearer on this side of the pond. The French don’t pay road tax and their equivalent in community charge is a fraction of what we pay.
Martel is the size of Wellington and there is no charge for parking. In Cahors, which is a major town, there is a charge but it is free between noon and 2pm. The closer you get to the ferry ports the more you start to pay because they know people in the UK do like paying for things.
Adrian Spragg, Wellington
5 Comments
Just France…?
being an ex shrewsbury man i’m seeing this myself. How did i ever pay all my bills in uk. here in Australia fuel is 50-55p a LT, when you bye road tax you get third party ins in with it at about 200 a year,half of parking areas are free and if not -from 8p for 15mins.MY point is the uk is costly to most of the world not just Europe. If i ever come back to uk it will be in fear.
I suppose some of this disparity is down to teh fact that the pound has dropped considerably against teh EUro since last October. The pound was worth around 1.47 euro in October and was worth around 1.29 in Feb. So teh cost of a litre of petrol in France would now be around 15% more expensive now to a Briton than it was in October. I can’t account for the rest of teh disparity of course.
Perhaps France will be having a few more new arrivals after the budget today ?
So who’s off then….?