Defiant Highland truckers caught up in violent protests by angry French farmers earlier this week were returning to the lion’s den last night.
Their key tactic was to find alternative routes to avoid any potential repeat of Tuesday night’s horror when seven artics carrying fish from Lochinver were hijacked en route to market in Lorient at Brittany in northwest France.
Sutherland-based haulier Hunter Transport advised its own drivers and urged others subcontracted elsewhere in the north to find different routes.
A 200-strong mob of French farmers threatened truckers, forced open their wagons and destroyed their £200,000 cargo by shedding it on the road on Tuesday after trapping the lorries behind giant barricades comprising farm vehicles, tyres and bales of hay.
The Highlanders had teamed up to avoid one blockade and switched to a back road before rejoining a main route, but then ran into another barricade where the 200 faced them.
The striking farmers swarmed over the trucks, using forklifts to pull the fish boxes onto the road, destroying 140 tonnes of food.
The convoy was caught up in a national French crisis over food prices in which striking farmers, furious about cheap foreign imports threatening their livelihood, have challenged any trucks from abroad believed to be carrying food.
Two French lorries were also ambushed and their cargo of beef destroyed.
Rioters have this week also dumped manure in cities and fish outside supermarkets.
The latest Lochinver deep-sea catch – from a French fishing vessel – was collected by eight trucks on Thursday night.
Travelling separately, the vehicles began the first leg of their latest journeys yesterday (FRI) afternoon, bound for ferries at Plymouth.
Michael Cowper, assistant transport manager of J&D Cowper at Evanton in Ross-shire, said: “We were given a choice of sailing from Plymouth to Roscoff (Brittany) or from Portsmouth to Caen. We opted for Plymouth because we feel that’s a bit safer.
“They probably won’t all be converging on the same point. They might be on different routes.”
In the event of a repeat of Tuesday’s drama, the advice to Highland truckers was “don’t argue with them.”