words by Williams

One of my favourite albums is Running on Empty by Jackson Brown. Not so much fun when you're actually doing it. It's how we ended up making the weirdest of detours as we were just a few miles from home.

Our last stopover on the Scotland trip  after the overnight at Loch Leven's Larder was in Carnforth, Lancashire and, by all accounts, we had enough diesel to get us home - well, according to the range indicator on the dashboard we did. Right up until the point we didn't.

We had made good progress all the way down the M6 and M56, but it was as we hit the A483 just south of Chester I started to get fuel anxiety.

At this point, our remaining fuel was indicated at about 50 or so miles-worth, well enough to reach diesel near Oswestry. Then, suddenly 50-odd became a worryingly precise 31, just as we hit static traffic where the A483 divides with Whitchurch to the left and Oswestry to the right.

We'd just come past a Shell station on the opposite side of the dual carriageway, and the simplest thing to do would have been to have come off and retraced our steps back towards Chester. But, hey, Whitchurch was less than 20 miles away, so what the hell.

What seemed like three miles down the road, our fuel estimate went from 31 to nought. We'd just past a signpost to Ellesmere, five miles away so, I blithely carried on towards Whitchurch, which seemed to be getting further away. Panicked by now, I did a u-turn in a 7.3m motorhome in the middle of a country lane and headed back towards Ellesmere.

Longest. Five. Miles. Ever. Never have I been so relieved to see a tiny fuel station - the Texaco on Church Street - and even though it meant squeezing up a tight alley and turning into the smallest of forecourts. Putting £30-worth of diesel felt about as good as making it to the loo by the skin of your teeth, but in reverse.

Then the guy behind the counter said: "How tall?" He nodded towards a sign at the exit. "2.85m," I said. "Headroom 2.8m" the sign replied.

"I'll reverse it then, and I promise to be as entertaining as I can," I said. I did. I was. And we're home.