The French West Indies are difficult enough of access anyhow.
They were recently promoted from colonial status to be departements of metropolitan France and the names of all would-be visitors have theoretically to be submitted to Paris before they can land. However, nothing really works on these far-flung segments of France. Earlier this year I flew into Guadeloupe in a chartered Grumman Goose (the pilot was ex-Fleet Air Arm, the co-pilot a Carib Indian from the backwoods of British Guiana). The harbour-master at Pointe a Pitre wore intimidating epaulettes, but when he came on board the amphi- bian to give me clearance he left his spectacles on shore. This made it much easier to persuade him that we had the droit du survol and various other permits, of which in point of fact we had never heard. Martinique's chief claims to fame are the Mont Pele disaster of 1902 and the birth there, in 1763, of a girl called Marie Joseph Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, better known to all of us as the Empress Josephine.
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