Consuming Interest
You can take it with you
By LESLIE ADRIAN
THERE are still parts of Et.rope which have avoided the brass grip of the tourist trade: where a village is a place where people live and not a resort. But almost all of them owe their unspoiled state to the fact that the local. transport is so bad that almost no outsiders ever managed to get there. If you have three months' holiday and endless patience, you can chance your luck with the chickens and screaming peasantry in the local bus, risk the heaying Greeks on bi-weekly steamers, or hitch-hike; for the rest of us, it's car or nothing. But even car-driving has its one frightful disadvantage : I myself get so bored with sitting glassy-eyed at the wheel through days of endless driving that I sometimes settle for much nearer and more crowded places.
It would be a different matter if I could simply be dropped somewhere, car and all, so before making up my mind what particular warm and sunny spot to head for this summer, I have been investigating ways of getting myself and the car to some unspoiled territory.
The voyage by boat to northern Spain usually takes three days, and the single fare for two people and a 12 h.p. car from London or South- ampton to Vigo or Corunna is about £55. The journey to Lisbon would take a day longer and cost an extra £10. This certainly bears comparison with the expense of flying the car to Cherbourg and driving some 1,200 miles, when the price of meals and overnight stops is added to the cost of petrol, oil and general wear and tear.
The Royal Mail Lines (Leadenhall Street, EC3; MANsion House 0522) run ships calling at Vigo and Lisbon approximately once a fortnight and the,Compaina Transatldntica Espanola (c/o Wal- ford Lines, 48 St. Mary Axe, EC3; AVEnue 5212) stop at Vigo, La Corunna, and on rare occasions at Santander, but their sailings are rather infre- quent. Early booking is essential on both lines.
A seven-day voyage on a P and 0 liner would be a pleasant rather than a cheap way of taking a car to Naples. The first-class fare is £43 single, but if there are four first-class passen- gers accompanying a car it will travel free. But it costs £25 to take a car if the passengers (what- ever their number) travel second class at a fare of £35. Swedish Lloyd (Marlow House, Lloyd's Avenue, EC3; ROYal 3161) operate a similar system, but there is no obligation to travel first class to have free transport for the car. Four fare-paying passengers- (including children be- tween three and twelve who travel at half-fare) from Tilbury to Gothenburg would pay nothing for their car; two passengers would be charged about £8 for a 12 h.p. car.
A road journey to Greece via Yugoslavia needs a robust car and a tireless driver, but from August this can be avoided by taking the new drive-on ferry which will run between Brindisi and Patras (calling en route at Igoumenitsa—for northern Greece—and Corfu). The trip will take eighteen hours and the cost for two people (accommodated in reclining aeroplane-type seats) and their 12 h.p. car is just under £21. Write ;o Lykiardopulo and Co. (24 St. Mary Axe, EC3; AVEnue 2745).
The General Steam Navigation Co. (40 Lower Thames Street; EC3; MINcing Lane 3000) run a cargo service approximately once a weWc from either London or Southampton to Bordeaux with space for three or four passengers. The journey takes three days and the departure dates are rather vague; cargo boats sail when they are ready and not to prearranged timetables. The cost for a car and two passengers would be about £45 if the booking (which would have to be made soon) was arranged through the AA or RAC.
The airborne car ferries may literally give a flying start to a holiday, but the services in their present form are no more than a lift over the Channel. However, both Channel Air Bridge and Silver Cities have applied for government licence to extend their runs deeper into France and Germany. Channel Air Bridge (21 Wigmore Street, Wl; MUSeum 1595), quite confident that their application will be successful, have definite plans to extend their flights this summer to Lyons, Strasbourg, Dusseldorf and Bremen, and they hope to announce fares and timetables soon.
Meanwhile, Channel Air Bridge have organised some of their flights to fit in with the regular con- tinental car sleepers running from Boulogne to Lyons and from Ostend to Munich (a service expected to extend to Innsbruck this summer). The total cost of the return fare, including couchettes, for two people and a 12 h.p. car from Southend is £74 to Munich and £46 to Lyons. All the car sleepers (including the Ostend-Mi express) also connect, of course, with the err Channel car ferries.
Another answer to all this, of course, vv° be simply to hire a car on the spot. I haul feeling it works out more expensive—but I find out and report shortly.
Nearly half the goods we buy are affected the practice of resale price maintenance, accordl to a paper published this week by the Institute a Economic Affairs. If it were to be abolished pr.id$ could be reduced by as much as 5 per cent., more, but 5 per cent, would save the consoling public £180 million a year, which works out 11 about £3 10s. for each one of us. The author of this fighting pamphlet, Profesea B. S. Yamey, probably knows more about tg economics of resale price maintenance (the ea forcement of standard prices for certain breeds of goods, no matter what the retailer wishes charge) than anyone else in the British Isles. Ill lends his authority to debunking the various argli. ments, which on the whole amount to no ill°r/, than special pleading, in favour of rpm—the usual shorthand term for this restrictive practice. Resale Price Maintenance and Shoppers' Cht ice (3s. 6d. from 7 Hobart Place, London, SWI; Sloane 9251) also demonstrates that rpm limits the range of consumers' choice by discouragia/ competition among retailers, and currently hinder' ing the development of the discount or cut-prier shops which have revolutionised selling in the United States. As things stand 'The cash-and carry shop must charge the same as the shop which sells on credit and deliveri the goods.' Let us 110 that Professor Yamey's onslaught delivers the goods and speeds up the abolition of rpm. If the Canadians can prohibit it, as they did in 1951 so can Britain.
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