by Ross Finlay (14 Sep 04)

There was no escaping the menace in my colleague's voice as he said, "If you don't write about this, then I will." Oh, all right, then.

It was at a recent new model launch event, in quite familiar territory, and I was driving along a little single-track hill road which was - admittedly - not quite on one of the recommended test routes. To put it another way, off it altogether.

As I approached a fairly gentle left-hand bend, a lady in a BMW came the other way, and halted level with a slightly wider part of the road, which was obviously intended to be an unofficial mid-corner passing place, although she didn't actually pull over completely into the beaten-earth verge on her side.

Ever the gentleman, and not wanting to signal her to get a bit more of her car off the tarmac, I smiled, and steered the one I was driving onto the rougher grass verge on my left, at a speed on the low side of walking pace.

I was still smiling at her as I drew level - at which precise moment the world tilted sideways, and my smile was suddenly re-directed to a patch of sky above the BMW's roof. About ten inches in, the rougher grass verge on my side turned out to be concealing a narrow, vertically-sided ditch, into which both my nearside wheels had collapsed.

Scrambling out, I found the lady in the BMW had been expecting something like this to happen: "The council don't seem to bother cutting the grass there," she said. "Locals never pull over to the left like you did."

Oh. Fine. We looked at my car, which no amount of revving or pushing was going to get back onto terra-really-firma. "I live at one of the farms along the road," my new associate added. "I'll see if I can get some help."

The help she brought turned out to be another lady, this time with a rope and a Daihatsu Fourtrak. As the two of them bustled about with tow ropes and things, the only useful part I managed to play was to find in the owner's manual where the concealed towing hooks were located. No use, though. The car was too embedded for the Fourtrak to have a chance of hauling it out.

I explained to my two ladies about being a motoring journalist, and that there were people from the company at a hotel a few miles away. "Do you have a mobile number for them?" came the question. "Yes, but I don't have a mobile of my own with me." Lady B rummaged in a pocket of her jacket and handed hers over.

"How do I work this?" She explained. When I slipped in an embarrassed but supposedly jocular comment on the whole situation, about being "just an incompetent townie", neither she nor her friend responded or moved a facial muscle, but the message "too true" came over loud and clear. I phoned the launch HQ, described the problem, and was told that a rescue party would be sent out immediately.

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