Over 1000 lorries thunder their way through Nogaro’s narrow streets every day, blocking the whole road as they take corners that were designed for horses and carts, not transnational articulated trucks, which save €60 a trip by avoiding the motorway. It’s not just Nogaro that’s had enough; several villages along the route between Auch and Bayonne want to stop the noise and pollution this traffic brings with it.

A protest was organised, so we went along to join the convoy driving at 10kph between Manciet and Nogaro and meeting another group which arrived from the opposite direction, having held up the lorries in both directions. We felt very French, Nick driving the Renault, wearing his Gascon beret. There were journalists at the rendezvous point and even some TV crews;  the maires of the affected villages and officials from the Department, in typical French style, made long, rambling speeches.

The plan is to ban the transnational lorries, forcing them to use the motorway, but apparently such a ban is not legally binding and can be overturned; nor, it seems, is it possible for the government to force the motorway companies to reduce their charges on big vehicles as they’re privately run. So we’re not holding our breath; this being France, this is a problem that will take many years, hundreds of meetings and thousands of civil servants to resolve, generating tons of waste paper in the process as they print everything in triplicate.

Such is the reality of life in France, but if we didn’t have the bureaucracy, what would we have to complain about?