When I go on holiday I can no longer put my car on the train as I have done for the past two decades.
This is because of the new tunnels.
To tell the truth I didn't even know about the new tunnels until I went to the railway station to book my ticket.
It turns out that the roofs of the new tunnels are lower than the roofs of the old tunnels.
I think it's so the trains can go faster. In today's world speed is of the essence.
My car can longer go on the car carrier top deck because if it did it would be too high to go through the tunnels on the train the lady at the station told me after looking on the screen of her computer.
Ah well, that's that.
The roads hereabouts are more often than not 'clogged' with traffic. That's the only word.
Because of the new low tunnels I now contribute to the traffic chaos in my own small way. In my own small Renault car.
I kept my previous Renault car which was the same height as my new one for fourteen years before buying the new one. Nobody told me I was buying a car that couldn't go on a train. Well, they wouldn't would they?
But at least in this latest heatwave which begins today I can buy ice-cream 'made in Portugal' in Vienna.
A refrigerated vehicle made the 2,882 km journey from Lisbon to Vienna with it's milky cargo. Just one vehicle in a whole avalanche of heavy good vehicles enjoying the clogged freedom of the new autobahns and motorways of Europe.
Often there are road works and accidents. And then the new motorways are even more clogged than usual.
What are these vehicles carrying that they must make long and arduous journeys of thousands of kilometers constantly criss-crossing Europe in all directions six days a week?
We hear of their loads only when they have accidents and the contents spill onto the roads.
Live animals, especially pigs and piglets, are often the victims.
Famously, not long ago a particularly large and heavy lorry flipped over going round a corner only 1,283 kilometers into it's long journey to the far west.
The lorry was from Rumania but its load may have originated in Turkey.
Out spilled the invaluable cargo . . . thousands upon thousands of . . .
rolls
of toilet
paper.
Stay safe and keep cool in the heatwave! And don't be caught short.
