OK, for a quiche, what's the famous French landmark in this picture? Correct....a Mercedes Unimog! Well actually it was the metal structure behind it I was looking for but it's all too easy to be distracted when I tell you that Propreté de Paris---the road maintenance department of the municipal cleaning services which serves the French capital has bought no less than nine stunning 177hp Euro-4 Unimog U400s, complete with tunnel washing units in order to keep the 720,000m² of tunnel surfaces around the Périphérique clean. Hmmm do you think that includes the tunnel that Princess Diana......well you know....errr no better walk away from that one Biglorryblog.
The Périphérique? Surely BLB's most favourite road in
But I digress. In addition to their tunnel washing units made by Mulag, the magnificent moggies also have demountable bodies for grit spreaders, snowploughs and snow clearance units by Schmidt Winterdienst-und Kommunaltechnik GmbH in St. Blasien (yes you DO know them, they're in the 
Meanwhile, for all you stat fans Propreté de Paris's 8,000 employees typically dispose of some 3,000 tonnes of waste in the city area each day, and clean some 1,400 km of roads and 2,800 km of pavement. And for the record the boom on the Mulag FME 600-T tunnel washing unit has a reach of 5.5 m and can clean walls, ceilings or continuous lighting strips in tunnels and subways. Moreover, thanks to its automatic, electronic scanning system with ultrasonic sensors it precisely adapts the washing brush to the structure of the surface to be cleaned. What's more the boom head can be fitted with either a brush or a spray bar and to avoid time-consuming refitting, Propreté de Paris plans to operate three vehicles with brushes and six with spray bars, together with the appropriate tank bodies.
With the 20 or so tunnels around the Périphérique only being cleaned at night traffic must be diverted and the relevant section of the Boulevard Périphérique closed down completely. BLB understands that "Tunnel-washing days" are exclusively between April 15 and November 15. So now you know.