BBC Spotlight
“If you thought the holiday traffic was bad at the weekend, we have been looking through Spotlight’s archives and have found this light hearted report from the late Keith Blackler in 1973”
https://www.facebook.com/bbcspotlight/videos/vb.150467675018739/992918117440353/?type=2&theater
:lol:
Terrible traffic jams also in France. Before the autoroute all the traffic heading for the French Riviera went down the Route Nationale. It had to pass through all the towns and villages on the way. A village in the Var called Tourves did not get a bypass until 1968. The jam could take 2 to 3 hours to get through this village! Every 2 years for the last 6 years the village has organised a car show with a difference to celebrate the building of the bypass, and of course to attract tourists!
For 2 hours the village is closed to traffic and pre 1968 cars, vans, lorries, motorbikes, scooters, bikes, caravans recreate the traffic jam.
Called Le Bouchon de Tourves.
Here is a link to a video from this year’s event
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=69zaJsgUf9E
To think all the cars there would be valuable classics now, but then they were just ordinary daily drivers.
I had a Cortina 2000GT Mk.3 back then which I was about to trade in for a Granada 3-litre.
One thing I don’t miss about those days was the smelly visible diesel fumes belched out by many lorries, buses and coaches, especially as they struggled to climb up hills in low gears…I can also remember my dad in his Mk3 Ford Zephyr getting stuck behind long queues of cars held up by slow moving trucks and unable to safely overtake for miles due to very few dual carriageways or by-passes.
