On the eve of the Channel Tunnel’s 25th birthday, Adam Jacot de Boinod applauds an extraordinary feat of engineering that was more than 200 years in the making.
ON May 6, it will be exactly 25 years since the Channel Tunnel, linking England and France, was officially opened. Both The Queen and François Mitterrand, France’s then president, attended the initial ceremony in Calais in 1994, before travelling through the Tunnel, or ‘le tunnel sous la Manche’, to mark the opening with a similar event in Folkestone.
It’s funny to think that, 8,500 years ago, people were walking between the UK and the Continent, as were dinosaurs, on land that consisted of chalk marl. More recently, we’d sailed and flown the distance, before this incredible engineering feat enabled us to cross by train as passengers—and for our cars and goods to be transported, too.
Some 85% of these drivers are British and only 6% are French. However, it does also offer us Britons the entire Continent to hook up to by road or rail, with enjoyable direct routes to Lille, Lyon, Amsterdam and Brussels and, in the summer, Marseille and Avignon. In the winter, it provides access to French ski resorts.
The advantages are self-evident. It’s ideal for those who hate flying. You can go straight from London’s St Pancras into Paris’s Gare du nord. The prices are competitive, it’s a door-to-door service for many, the passport queues are more manageable than airports and, above all, it’s far quicker.
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