From Auriol Reid Sir: Leo McKinstry surely must be overstating
his case. My husband and I spend most of our holidays in France and recently paid £50 a night for a simple château hotel in north-west France without any luxuries — we did not need them — but a magnificent chateau hotel in Provence? It's hard to believe. As for meals, it must be ten years or more since we paid as little as £7 a head with wine in any restaurant there other than a routier. Except for house wine, the French know how to charge for wine. I have kept a bill of a meal in a pleasant restaurant we visited in 1994 which came to £24 including service and two glasses of wine, no bottle. This was still cheap, but it was not in Provence under vines in a beautiful restaurant in 2003.
We find France quite expensive in some ways. Motorways and bridges gobble up the euros, as does a stop-off at a café — not bedecked with flowers and pretty as our own pubs, but often pretty grim. We have never found visiting historic places, museums, etc. in France that cheap, and the welcome and service in Europe generally can be as offhand and indifferent as our own. As for dirtiness . . . well, there are still those holes in the ground that are loos in France, but, surprisingly, the dirtiest country I have visited recently was Germany.
However, fair's fair. Many of our hotels and restaurants are grossly overpriced and our public transport costs far too much. There are other faults but not as serious, I think, as Mr McKinstry makes out. The standard of food in our restaurants and pubs continues to improve, and the best service I ever had was at the Savoy.
Auriol Reid
London W6
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