My little French bale of hay
By Brian Clegg
I’m just back from doing some driving in France. I love driving over there – the parts I drive in are much quieter than roads here (the worst part of the journey is the M25 on the way to the Channel Tunnel) and it just seems more enjoyable*.
But there is one oddity that reminds of the old story that London cab drivers had to carry a bale of hay in their taxis as late as the 1970s, because of an ancient law that required them to have food for their horse.
Sadly, the old story isn’t exactly true, though it has an overlap with reality. Apparently, the London Hackney Carriage Act of 1831 did state that cab drivers would be fined 20 shillings (£1) if they didn’t carry something for their horses to eat. And this genuinely wasn’t repealed until 1976, though as far as I am aware it was never enforced for internal combustion engined cabs.
The French equivalent, I would suggest, is the requirement to carry a box of spare bulbs in the car. We always make sure we have all the requirements to drive on French roads, so there is one sitting in our glove box. But our car’s lighting is entirely LED – none of the spare bulbs will actually fit the car, nor could I replace a ‘bulb’ by the roadside if they suffered a failure (unlikely though that is with LED). I like to think of it as ma petite botte de foin.
* Don’t get me started on the joy that is Bip&Go
Image from Unsplash+ by Getty Images
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Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/07/my-little-french-bale-of-hay.html
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