OK, I’ve had my first taste of country living. I was driving home from work in my tiny little 1.0 liter Opel Corsa, and decided to take what looked like a nice shortcut. I started hacking down this road that rapidly narrowed to only one (very narrow) lane wide, with trees on either side, clipping the wing mirrors. It was night, the road was very winding and I had about 10 yards visibility, but I gave it a go anyway.
After about a mile, the tarmac gave way to gravel, so I slowed down to about 60mph and kept going. The gravel then gave way to grass, which was a bit more slippery, but I kept going anyway – once you take a course of action you have to stick with it! But then the grass path (it was no longer a road – I think it was technically a footpath….) turned into two tire ruts in mud which, owing to the huge amount of rain we have had recently, were filled with water. I slowed down as best I could, but at that speed it took me a couple of hundred yards. By the time I had regained control (and managed to avoid driving up the bank and flipping the car), the car had slipped into the ruts, and was about a foot deep in mud.
I tried getting it out myself but couldn’t budge it, so I called out a towtruck. He took one look at it and announced that he’d never get his towtruck to the car (it was a good 300 yards down the track. He called a guy with a 4WD truck (actually a tiny jeep kind of thing) who decided that he wouldn’t be able to get enough traction to pull the car out, even if he could get there, and just left me to sort it out myself. Very useful. By now it was almost midnight and subzero, so I gave up.
The next morning I wandered around until I found a farmhouse, and pleaded with the first rustic-looking oik I bumped into to come and pull me out with his tractor. He only spoke Flemish, but I’d taken the precaution of looking up the words for “car”, “stuck”, “mud”, and “stupid”, and I think he took pity on me. He pulled me out pretty easily (although as he went up the 45degree bank to get around my car, and the tractor started to slip, I thought he was going to just crush my car…), but not without grumbling a lot under his breath, and looking at me as if I was stupid (which I probably was). Still, at least he did it. Cost me a crate of beer, though.
I made it into work by lunchtime, and just told my boss I had ‘car trouble’ – no point in elaborating and having him look at me as though I was stupid, as well….