(From Sim Harris in Calais)

EUROTUNNEL has been celebrating its 20^th birthday in Calais today – with a patriotic medley of national anthems played to an invited audience while abseiling dancers gyrated on each side of the tunnel entrance.

Train drivers in charge of the iconic Shuttles sounded their horns in salute while the ceremony was in progress, watched by more than 100 guests, who braved the sub zero temperatures in the Pas de Calais to help commemorate the completion of the second decade since the two bores – one from each side of the Channel, were famously connected in an historic breakthrough.

The chief executive of Eurotunnel Jacques Gounon saluted the work of the tunnellers in the 1980s, and recalled how the Queen and the French President opened the Tunnel for business in 1994.

Eurotunnel has not had an easy ride in the years since then. For some time the company appeared to be in danger of foundering under a mountain of debt, which was only restructured at great cost to the original shareholders.

The future appears to be rosier. The Shuttles using the Tunnel on this freezing morning appeared to be well laden with lorries, whose drivers are enjoying what is probably the easiest part of their journeys, considering the treacherous road conditions today in much of north west Europe.

Passenger operators, too, are set to compete for paths in the next few years, following the introduction of international open access.

Today is a pause for celebration. Tomorrow it will be back to business as usual on both sides of the Channel, and along the undersea length of the remarkable achievement of civil engineering which has now connected Britain and France for 20 years.