What is this truck trying to do?

After half an hour of careful maneuvering, this truck managed to get into the courtyard of our gite in France. The arched entrance to our courtyard is only a few centimeters wider than the truck. But why did we need to get it in there?

We were close to the end of restoring the 18th.Century stables in Ventenac-en-Minervoir in Languedoc, when the mayor paid us a visit. We were filling the newly tiled swimming pool and he told us, very firmly, to stop. It was a very hot summer, water to the village was in short supply and the village council had initiated a ban on watering plants, washing cars and filling swimming pools.

This put us into a major panic. In a couple of months, we were hosting a big family gathering to show off our newly restored French dream house, especially the new swimming pool.

Locals in the village told us our only course of action was to drill a well on our property and use our own water to fill the pool. This sounded like a very expensive proposal, but what else could we do? Would we run into water bans in the future?

And it was expensive! 800 euros and the drillers couldn't guarantee that they would find water. Even so, we went ahead and figured that once we had our own well, we would be independent and we would be able to swim while others had empty pools.

What a surprise when the drilling team arrived. Their truck was huge. There was much discussion and careful measuring before Marcel agreed to maneuver his truck through our 350 year old arched entrance. We, of course, had to agree that they wouldn't be responsible if they knocked down our stone wall.

It took 35 minutes of careful reversing back and forth before we heard a loud cheer from the dozen, or so, spectating neighbours. The truck was finally inside the courtyard!

It was plain sailing (or plain drilling) from then on. We picked a spot to begin drilling and crossed our fingers. We were lucky, we reached water at about 8 meters. All that was left to do was to cap the hole and get the truck back out of the courtyard. It didn't take them as long to get back out. I don't know if it was the experience of getting in, or the cool beers I promised Marcel and his team in the local bar.

The ironic part of this story is that we have never used the well. We haven't even bought a pump to get the water out. Just before our visitors were due to arrive, the water ban was called off. A new pipeline to the village had been opened up. But we are prepared for the next ban, and will be ready to invite our neighbours to swim in our cool pool.

This story illustrates that when planning to renovate an old property always expect the unexpected. When budgeting, allow about 20% for contingencies, and you'll probably use it all. Next time I'll tell the story of how we bought out gite in france.