Almost one in five Dutch people choose France for their summer holiday, according to the most recent figures from the CBS statistics office.

Tomorrow, the summer break starts in the middle region of the Netherlands, and the press has been full of tips on how to avoid ‘black Saturday’ traffic queues.

The CBS has published last year’s run-down of holiday destinations and, as usual, driving holidays south lead the pack. Last year, 11.7m people went away on holiday and 18.3% of breaks were to la belle France.

This year, holiday bookings to places like Greece and Turkey appeared to be down in May but some agents reported a late surge of bookings after the wettest June ever recorded in some parts of the Netherlands.

According to Dutch broadcaster the NOS, some places would actually rather have refugees than Dutch tourists. One popular beach in Mallorca has had enough of drunken holidaymakers, with authorities pleading that visitors stick to the ban on outdoor boozing via a Facebook appeal.

Meanwhile, Schiphol airport announced on Friday that it is expecting its highest ever number of travellers this summer, an average of 200,000 a day.