Not every day was spent having long lunches and drinking lovely wines – occasionally we would have a Disaster – and once one little thing goes wrong that often leads to another and another . . . yesterday was such a day. We were driving through the town of Dax looking for a pharmacy and maybe a place to park so we could have some lunch. The town had a river running through the middle and a bizarre one way system which made it difficult to navigate our way around. When we wanted to turn, a “no entry” sign would appear. At one stage we found ourselves entering a one way street the wrong way and we had to reverse out against the traffic. The next turn was into a steep, narrow street that got more and more skinny as we went up and rounded a corner. Our only way out was down a steep alley with high stone walls on either side and a tight corner at the bottom. We gingerly drove down and we had almost made it when our wing mirror smashed against the wall and shattered. We managed to turn the corner at the bottom without further incident. We resumed our journey and stopped at a fuel station; unfortunately Tony picked the petrol pump instead of diesel and had quarter-filled the tank before he realised his mistake.
We were only about 8k from our destination, staying with Charles and Caroline Lamb at Monségur so with fingers crossed we limped to the Lambs. They were having an extension build and the builders (English), on hearing our predicament, helped us drain the fuel tank using their electric pump. We were then able to refill with a can of diesel, enough to get us back to the fuel station to refill. Fortunately, it seemed no permanent damaged had been done.
