UKC

Motorway (and side roads) in Arve valley were bad today.  Probably going to get worse.

Thanks for the advice. I should be OK going to Diggle chippy for me dinner tomorrow then?

Is this protesting farmers? I'm on my way north through the west of France and got several long diversions today.

yes.  

Most major motorways are blocked in some way. Yes it's the farmers protesting about the lack of fair income for organic production and seems to be pretty well supported and tacitly endorsed by the authorities. 

It started last Thursday. We had a medical appointment in Grenoble and as we left to come home at lunchtime access to the motorway (so therefore the ring road) was blocked. Luckily our route home via mountain roads wasn't too badly affected once we got out of the city but I'm not heading in again until it's over as Grenoble is a pretty vulnerable choke point. 

https://voyage.aprr.fr/carte-itineraires?type=webcam&poi=webcam;3033

Just looked on the traffic cam above and it looks like it's flowing north now, but the southbound route is still empty so if you're heading down to the Oisans or Écrins this will affect you. 

Like I said this has popular support in France and will soon start hitting supplies on shelves as I heard them say they would start blocking food deliveries. All the local village name signs in my area are turned upside down since a couple of months now. At first I thought it was the local yoof but turns out it's related to the protests. 

I've noticed that all over France and was wondering what it was about!

It's cos one of the expressions the protestors use to complain about their situation roughly translates as 'we're walking on our heads' ie upside down, as opposed to trampling on our skulls.

The upside down signage symbolises that. To my mind, a simple, non-violent and effective protest technique.

Speaking to a French farmer last week it’s about EU and nett zero restrictive practices, red tape, cheap imports and a supposedly intransigent government. Sound familiar? Mind you with inflation, food, fuel and electricity way more expensive in France than UK I’m also annoyed. Skiing and climbings good though.

Yes, ubiquitous, very noticeable, harmless.

As for some of the diversions, they seemed to have, inevitably, been signed in a hurry and several times abandoned me deep in the countryside. Ended up navigating by the sun. At least I saw a bit of genuine rural France! The roadblocks looked pretty good natured with lots of flags and tables of food.

Except thats not all true; inflation is lower in france (ha been for at least the last couple of months) and <pedant alert> isn't a measure of cost anyway, but the rate of change in cost. Food and fuel costs are indeed more (and i was surprised at the difference in food costs, as I cant really say i notice the difference when in France). Electricity is however, significantly cheaper in France. Even at the Basic rate, of 22.76c / kWh, its about 40% cheaper then UK. And yeah, climbing and skiing better. No argument there.......

Phil must stay somewhere expensive

I think comparative grocery costs are complex. Cheap shitty food is generally much cheaper in the UK but good quality food on average doesn't seem much more expensive in France and restaurants are cheaper in France. Plus good wine in shops is a lot cheaper in France.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65833619

We have just spent the last five weeks living in France and tend to spend the maximum allowable time there, so I know how it affects my wallet.
The one thing you are correct about is complexity, mainly the tax regime and the insane bureaucracy, but for the bottom line just Google is fuel and food cheaper in France or UK.
Also French supermarkets now sell the same cheap ultra processed food as the UK. 
 

I normally spend two to three weeks in France on average, the last time was Font for two weeks last year. I linked the BBC survey which showed a huge variation across different products. In general shitty food (that I almost never buy) seems cheaper in the UK to me and the things I like most as treats, ie ordinary cheese and wine and good lower price restaurants, are much cheaper in France and much good quality produce seems comparable. How about some counter examples?

From my other comments above, it depends very much where you shop and what you buy, and there are some oddities; for eg beer in pubs / bars is more expensive in france than the uk, but cheaper in supermarkets. Like everywhere, you can make it as cheap or expensive as you like, and for me, relative cost changes have been caused by currency fluctuations as much as anything else. Its also unfair to just compare raw prices; french culture is much more biased towards food / drink, and they are happy to pay a highe proportion of their income for better quality.

An attitude for quaIIty I share, but I still think decent quality produce comes cheap. I rarely spend more than 10 euros on wine for instance and enjoy really good southern French wine for more like half that (Ventoux in particular often seems amazingly good value).

You can't really compare the 'cost of living' with the 'cost of holidaying'. Even if you're spending a couple of months rather than a couple weeks, you're spending time in different places, filling your day with different things to the locals. From my 12 years in France, in not a particularly cheap area.

• More expensive
  • DIY materials, especially paint
  • Beers, especially rubbish beer like Heineken
  • Most second hand things in general - its like they've never heard of depreciation
  • Tradespeople including cleaners
  • Motorways (tolls)
• Less expensive
  • Vet bills
  • Dentistry
  • Pre-school childcare
  • Electricity
• About the same
  • Council tax equivalent (well it depends where you live)
  • Petrol (had an electric car for two years so out of touch) but outside the last few inflationary spikes it seems on a par

I'm lucky enough to be a high earner but I don't think I actually pay a lot in tax - its complicated in how much gets paid out in social security contributions before tax and then how much is shared by the employer. The overall burden is probably quite high but its not very transparent.

We buy almost all our food in a small independent organic shop or Biocoop, a national cooperative of organic stores so the costs are generally significantly higher than I can get in the supermarket (which I only tend to get bin bags, dishwasher tablets and toothpaste from) but I want to support the kind of farming the latest protests are drawing attention to. We get all our bread, eggs and cheese from a local épicerie with quite high prices and I'm quite pleasantly surprised how regularly people will drop significant amounts of money in there (got some bread this morning that he sells on behalf of a local bakery/mill - 7eur for a 900g loaf but its pretty amazing stuff).

Ha, what you say about 2nd hand is true. One of my well travelled French friends says they, the French, don't really understand the concept like others do. Prices are almost the same as new stuff ad they Don't see why they should reduce them by much if they're still fine and working ok.

A slight tangent from the thread but I was amused this morning by a mail from our local email list (mostly small ads for things for sale or people looking for or offering lifts to/from Gap or Grenoble) - someone offering a third hand sofa in exchange for a bar of black chocolate (size not given).

Sounds like code for some kind of wife swapping shenanigans!

It was impossible to drive through Paris before the farmers started blocking roads, so not really a change as a result of their protests.

How do you know ?

Back on topic. Drove back from costa blanca area at the back end of last week.

Driving through Spain and even England was pain free.

France. Drove down the previous month avoiding all tolls using google maps, sluggish to Poitiers then easy to border.

On way back used a combination of google maps and a real map. Google maps toll free seems obsessed with shortest distance and going through built up areas. I was attempting to take a practical route avoiding most tolls. Glad we only used the autoroute between Le Mans and Rouen, that bit alone cost 61 euro.

Part of the A10 was allegedly shut, quite a few manifestation signs which I guessed meant protests. Saw one  tractor /hay bale road block manned by a single bored looking  farmer.

To be fair, in the Grenoble area at least, the blocked motorways are the toll free sections bypassing the city. This sends everyone through the suburb of Sassenage to go north/south. 

Not impressed with google maps atm.

Sent me through the notorious low height underpass in Rouen going north, going south no issues, I managed the 2.6 m one but slammed on the brakes at a 1.8m one !

In Spain, testing it out, it send me through the middle of Xalo  when the bypass is about 50m further with 40kph travel compared to 10kpm if you'r lucky  through town.

 Just use it now for general planning and hopefully correct warning of delays.