18 AUGUST 1939, Page 32

MOTORING

IT is pleasant to realise that no matter how often you do it, how familiar you are with the whole exciting business, there are still very few thrills left so satisfying as taking your car across the Channel on the right sort of holiday. Custom fails completely to stale the infinite variety of that adventure. Even if you are going no further than the Riviera, to no stranger goal that Biarritz or Aix-les-Bains the Italian lakes or the Brittany coast, you still land on some foreign quay with that expectation which is adventure itself, still look down the first long miles of a route rationale with quickened pulse. It comes mainly from living on an island. All our own roads lead to or run close to the sea, some as much as 6o miles from it, the majority nearer 20. Wherever you go you are facing that approaching barrier. When you land at Antwerp or Calais or Havre and you have started down that exciting road the sea may be anything from too 10 1,200 miles off. Between you and it lies a whole continent. You do not give it another thought.

Foreign touring is very comfortable these days, particu- larly, as I suggest, if you arrange it sensibly, which is to say that you leave no addresses and make no time-tables. Both of these are highly dangerous to the complete success of a proper cruise on roads that should, so far as you are concerned, be as nearly uncharted as possible. The actual transport is, so to speak, done for you and you are put to no more trouble in the reaching of the place of landing with your car than you are when you cross the Humber by ferry. On the other side you are welcomed, your path made smooth. All you have to do is to choose it and follow it so long as it pleases you.