[R--gR] ploting a sequence of string dates

[stef salvez]

Dear all, I have a panel data across countries and individuals. For
each country I have a sequence of dates For France for example
22/02/09
 22/03/09
19/04/09
17/05/09
12/07/09
 09/08/09
06/09/09
04/10/09
 01/11/09
29/11/09
27/12/09
31/01/10

For Italy
14/06/09
12/07/09
09/08/09
06/09/09
04/10/09
 01/11/09
 29/11/09
27/12/09
31/01/10
 28/02/10
 28/03/10

I have these sequence of dates in an excel file. The structure of the
excel file is
France              Italy                        ......
22/02/09	       14/06/09
 22/03/09 	12/7/2009
19/04/09   	9/8/2009
17/05/09 	        6/9/2009
12/7/2009	4/10/2009
 09/08/09 	 01/11/09
6/9/2009	        29/11/09
4/10/2009	27/12/09
 01/11/09   	31/01/10
29/11/09 	      28/02/10
27/12/09 	      28/03/10
31/01/10	


and so forth


 And I want to “plot” (in one graph) these sequences of dates in the
sense that I want to have a”visual” contact of the behavior of the
series of dates because as you can see I do not have the same start
date and end date and the next date is not always every 28 days. So I
have a jump in some cases. I would like to visualize these
characteristics of the two series of dates by making a plot. And I
would like the distance (in days)  between successive dates for one
country to be written on the graph. Any suggestions? A strip plot
would be ok but I have no idea how to use it to construct nice plots.
Any code would be greatly appreciated

Thanks