Mark and Tom awoke to those extremely irrititating but somehow expected words, redolent of the Apollo 13 mission... “Mark, we have a problem”. That was Rich at about 06.30 and without the full-scale back up team that NASA had at their disposal, not that we could go so far as to compare the two expeditions – at least not at this stage! The problem, it turned out, was that we had run out of fuel on a motorway in France. This had the potential to contravene at least 2 laws that we could think of; firstly, breaking down because of lack of fuel, and secondly, potentially having to tilt the cab and prime the engine whilst carrying out some other mechanical work on the side of the motorway. It was pitch dark and our breakdown equipment (hazard triangles etc) were locked in the trailer on the road side. Coupled with that, we didn't have any fuel in our spare jerry's and we guessed on what Richard described that the next garage was at least 5km down the road. Mark took off with 2 jerry's leaving Tom and Rich to sort out making the most of warning oncoming vehicles of the hazard ahead. We were parked in the hard shoulder, but being a big vehicle, we were a little wide for it.
Having donned hi-vis jackets and arranged the hazard triangles, a set of orange flashing lights turned up. This was highway maintenance and they took to getting cones out and doing a professional job of closing the lane around us and filtering the traffic past. It was al smiles and consolations from him, who spoke not a word of English, and Tom's French was rusty but rapidly improving... or improvising yet again. Once the cones were set out and Mark had been on his walk for about 50 minutes, he phoned to say he was on his way back. Soon after, the gendarmerie arrived. Two young guys who really wanted no trouble and again were all smiles. After a quick chat with the highway maintenance guy they said they were a bit cold and asked which direction Mark had gone. We duly pointed them off up the road and 15 minutes later they arrived back with Mark and one jerry can. Two had just been stupidly hard to carry for 5 kilometres and in fact had been ditched back at the garage after about 200 yards.
At this point Mark emptied the jerry into the tank whilst one of the gendarme's asked Tom for a lighter, carrying on that great French tradition of Gaulouise and looking on. Quickly getting bored he asked Tom in his neatest English whether he thought there would be a problem starting the truck. Tom diplomatically responded “Je ne sais pas... peut être”, knowing that to re-prime the engine and drag th fuel through could take a couple of hours at least and that it was illegal to do where we were, and also that we didn't have so much as a sniff of European breakdown cover! Basically we were at risk of a fine at the least and arrest at the worst. Luckily, the engine burst into life after Mark, thankfully, had the genius idea of injecting some ether through at the same time, which had the effect of pushing the fuel through and bringing it to life. By this time it was 08.45 and light, the police didn't care about us and simply waved us on. We then restocked with fuel and picked up the jerry Mark had left at the garage up the road. By the time we had done this and fixed an air leak and a few other things it was raining hard – certainly not a time to be standing at the side of the road, so thank we got our breakdown sorted when we did.
About 10 kilometres down the road we came across our police friends with radar gun out, upholding the speeding laws. Friendly waves and smiles hopefully detracted from the fact that we were slightly over our limit. Onwards towards Bordeaux and a McDonalds brunch and Hypermarket shop on the outskirts later and once again we were on the road. Not too long after and Mark noticed, whilst Tom and Rich slept that we weren't getting full power through the transmission. This time we were able to pull over properly at an Aire, change the fuel filter and cross our fingers that all would be well! By this time we were quite bored of France, unfortunately with limited power we would not have been able to make it over the Pyrenees and so we had to sort the problem out. Our diagnosis seemed to have worked and we cracked on down past Biarritz and over the border by about 7pm.
A fuel fill and another night of driving ahead of us, Rich took the wheel once we reached the Madrid plains and by about 02.30 on Saturday morning we stopped to refuel about 40 kilometres away from the city.
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