In this photo, I think we had a convoy of three of us and associated pilot cars/escorts parked up on the French side of Frejus tunnel, due to the shortage of sense of humour of a Gendarme officer who
had Arrete’d us all for some totally trivial reason something to do with our ‘papiers’ or possibly lack thereof, I don’t know, nor didn’t much care, as it was a beautiful place to be parked up in.
I remember on this particular occasion, having an argument, totally in French, with the Gendarme but, he did not seem as impressed with me or my mastery of his language, as I thought he should have been. What we were carrying were some kind of silos, which was a regular job of ours, and I always thought that if we tack-welded them together, we could have stretched the trailers out even further and loaded four at a time, as to exceed the length regulations it needed to be an ‘indivisible’ load.
In the other photo (right) is Bill our lead Pilot car and PM, who skilfully sorted things so we could get on our way again, standing next to Louise
Frejus border.
The second tunnel we often used, was the Frejus tunnel further to the west of Mt Blanc, which was a better transit route for Rome or the west or south of Italy, running between Modane on the French side, and Bardonecchia on the Italian side. Newer and brighter, and slightly longer than Mt Blanc at 8 miles/12.87km, and with less gradient, it sits at about 4,000 feet above sea level, and is a little bit of a bigger hole in the mountain, as you can get loads up to 4.3m high through Frejus, although only 4m high through Mt Blanc. Nonetheless, we had Kevin, who could still put a little scratch in the top of the tunnel sometimes, and on one occasion, hold up a convoy of Lincoln limousines containing none other than the Michael Jackson. I recollect that Kevin was pissed off because his security guards got a bit uppity and would not even give him or Louise a Michael Jackson T-Shirt. Luckily, Kevin managed to unjam himself from the tunnel roof, so the Michael Jackson entourage did not have to Moonwalk back out of the tunnel.
Transiting the mountain routes, was always one of my favourite parts of the journeys. The scenery around Frejus, and indeed Mt Blanc too, was absolutely stunning, and Frejus also had the additional eye candy of the blonde girl who worked in Bardonecchia services, and travelled to and from work everyday riding her bicycle up and down the mountain, which surely accounted for why she had such powerful legs.
(Kevin’s other half) who was driving another of the Pilot/Escort cars, and (Left) the driver of the Iveco behind us (really nice guy but sorry, cannot remember his name after all these years. If anyone knows, can you email it to me please?)).