In France, school resumed in early September. The type of hotel clientele changed slowly. Retirees and childless couples took over from families who escaped on the famous “Motorway of the Sun”. There were about 30 kilometres of traffic jams on the last weekend of August. For convenience stores it was the best of the year, radiators and temperaments were at maximum overheating.
All were scrutinizing the traffic forecasts to find out when would be the most opportune moment to leave and avoid them. I didn’t understand at first the French idea of “direction of departure” and “direction of return” since they were necessarily different depending on where we were, and where we wanted to go right? I was told that it was the direction of movement of travellers mainly from the North of France. For
