The opening of the Channel Tunnel, the first fixed link between the United Kingdom and France, is the fulfilment of a dream that has obsessed generations of engineers in the last two centuries. To mark this magnificent achievement, Royal Mail and La Poste (the French Post Office) have worked together to produce an attractive set of se-tenant pairs of stamps. Embodying perspectives of each other's national characteristics, the stamps highlight how the Channel Tunnel may help to enrich mutual understanding between two proud, historic nations.

Although only about twenty miles wide at its narrowest point, the English Channel, or La Manche as it is known in France, has posed a formidable barrier between the United Kingdom and France since the Ice Age. Now the concept of a fixed link has become a reality.

The fact that trains – either shuttles carrying vehicles, or through passenger and freight trains – can pass through the 50-kilometre tunnel in about thirty-five minutes is bound to affect attitudes towards travel between the two countries. Even more significant is the realisation that the journey can now be made entirely on dry land and without ever encountering the proverbial 'fog in the Channel' that has isolated the UK from continental Europe for some 10,000 years.

The left-hand stamp shows the French cockerel being embraced by the British lion across the Channel, their reflections symbolising the Tunnel that lies under the sea. The right-hand stamp shows hands across the Channel with the Tunnel and train beneath.

The two stamps are in a different colourway for the second value.