France’s government-owned rail operator, SNCF, announced earlier this year plans for a new TGV line to open up the bottleneck in service to Provence and the Riviera. Now that plan has run into a fight with France’s best-known perfume, Chanel No. 5
The south, despite its popularity with tourists and its major cities of Marseille and Nice, is historically the least-served area on the high-speed rail network, often crowded, and with a 6-hour ride from Paris to Nice, meaning that air is a much faster option. The new €6.7 billion line is designed to address those issues, and would cut an hour off the time between Marseille and Nice.
But, Chanel has complained that a new viaduct over the Siagne Valley, near Grasse, would disrupt the growing fields for the jasmine and rose flowers that go into No. 5 (a thousand jasmine flowers and a dozen May roses in each 30ml bottle).
The perfume company implied it would pull out of the area: “The construction of a viaduct and the regular passage of high-speed trains over these fields of flowers would force Chanel to cease supporting its artisanal activities in the region.”
Obviously, to be continued…
Photo: TGV Viaduct near Avignon (Bonesx1/Wikimedia)
