Via some recent correspondence with Geoffrey Vesey Holt I recently came across the website http://www.fleeinghitler.org/ set up by Professor Hanna Diamond.
It concerns life in occupied Europe in the Second World War
I was introduced to the website by the story written up later in life by an 11 year old schoolboy, Philip Smith, whose father, then working in Paris acquired bicycles for his family to leave the city for La Rochelle and thence St Jean de Luz. He calculated their itinerary of 685 miles at an average of over 50 miles per day.
Whilst we are all becoming irritated at not being able to travel I am also relieved at not having to cycle from Paris to St Jean de Luz picking up food along the way and sleeping on straw mattrasses. I am also grateful that our currency has not been devalued by 50% as the French franc was in 1937.
