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Jan 16, 2009

LORRY DRIVER'S STORY * UK - Long-distance was once a romantic pursuit, as Christopher Hamilton remembers.

Can it still be so?

London,England,UK -The New Stateman, by Christopher Hamilton -15 January 2009: -- European legislation dictates that truckers can drive only nine hours per day (ten hours twice a week), with enforced rests in between in a comfortable bunk... My own low-budget road movies took place in the early 1980s when I drove for a small removals firm created by a bunch of minor public schoolboys who had gone off the rails in Fulham... This was not foolproof. One driver wrecked three trucks in a week... On my first run, the driver's mate appointed to keep me awake had to be poured into the cab outside the Windsor Castle pub near Notting Hill, only to fall out again at Dover, on to a customs officer. There were Checkpoint Charlie moments abroad, too, because my papers were generally out of order and the load manifests dodgy at best...On my weekly 850-mile trip to the south of France, the free cabin on the Newhaven-to-Dieppe ferry was essential, as freight drivers were given a litre of red wine to go with a huge (and very good) complimentary dinner. For lunch, an array of Relais Routiers between Calais and Paris offered (another) litre of wine with an excellent three-course lunch for 15 francs, with endless complimentary pastis before it and copious brandies afterwards, "pour la route"!... (Picture 1 above: Lorries coming off the Calais ferry at Dover Harbour - Picture 2 below: BBC news)

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