17 Oct 07
Then the first truck hoves into view over the horizon. I park and ask the driver how he feels to be at the back of Europe's longest traffic jam, which is a bit like asking how it feels to be the fifth Beatle - or the 1,500th. Understandably, he grunts in my general direction, spits out of the window and returns to his newspaper.
Having established that being 1,000 places behind drivers who are already thoroughly hacked off is not enjoyable, I move on along the lines.
I had expected a litter-strewn, depressing scene with an undercurrent of violence born of unimaginable frustration: but it's not like that. This is partly because the combination of autumn sunlight and harvest-time fields makes for a rather idyllic view, but it's also because the queue is orderly, with police patrols moving along the lines like the tenders of an armada. They ensure that the truckers don't park in any villages and keep them off bends.
Despite the dangers of having hundreds of large articulated trucks occupying one side of a two-lane highway, the drivers park carefully and realise that littering the verges would only inconvenience the poor souls behind. And with up to 1,499 poor souls behind, that's a lot of bad karma to make up for.
Once they have been assigned a place for the night, the drivers perform their numerous bits of maintenance before setting about making themselves as comfortable as possible.
