There's always a solution.

Not a bad maxim to have in life, wouldn't you say? And if you don't have it yourself, then it might be an idea to find someone to hang out with who does.

That's what I've (inadvertently) done. Not that my husband always lives by it, I might add, but nevertheless it comes up at appropriate times, such as running out of petrol in the middle of the desert.

One of the priorities on a motorbike trip, you'd think, would be petrol, and you'd be right. So it was for us. Before we had even left England, Jez had pressed upon me the importance of never passing a petrol station without filling up. I had no problem with that. Indeed, I shared his sense of priority.

Timbuktu by motorbike Pt 2: roaring through Spain

On a three-month career break, Alison Thomson and partner hit the continent but find life on the road tougher than expected

A career break to Timbuktu

When Alison Thomson wed last year, she was promised adventure... a three-month journey to Timbuktu by bike

We had read that as you enter Mauritania, there are no petrol stations between Nouadhibou to Nouakchott (500km), so you have to carry fuel in jerry cans. (We have yet to ascertain whether that is indeed the case, but better to be on the safe side.) Jez, wisely, wanted to work out in advance exactly how many km to the litre the bike got, so we could stock up.

The fact that we did this while heading into what we would soon discover was a petrol drought proved to be our undoing.

We had set off early with a full tank from Taghazout, still well within Morocco, stopped for a light couscous lunch in a fairly unprepossessing town called Tiznit, then took off for Guelmim. Soon after, Jez noted we were on the last bar of 10 (which meant about 15km to the litre), without the light coming on. We duly pulled up at the next petrol station, only to be told they were empty.

Not the end of the world, we thought - we still had 4l in reserve. “There's always a solution,” said Jez calmly over the intercom. That's my boy! Ever the optimist. Instantly reassured, I started running over the options in mind.

We could make it to Guelmim, just. There we might be lucky, or we might have to stay the night until petrol arrived. Or we might have to find ourselves a fixer who could fetch us some.

Meanwhile, Jez had gone very quiet on me. And as luck would have it, everywhere between, and in Guelmim itself, had also run dry. Why hadn't we done what we'd set out to do and fill up whenever we saw a petrol station? Ironically, it was to avoid this very situation.

At Guelmim lies a rather uninspiring bit of brickwork over the road that signals entry to the Sahara, al Bab al Sahra, gateway to the desert. A charming man at the petrol station told us that they had been dry for five days, no idea why.

Gasoil, diesel, for trucks and taxis, was plentiful, but not super (the old four-star) or sans plomb, our ideal. My well of optimism had begun to run dry too. But our fortunes were about to change, as a Mauritanian fellow on the back of someone's moped pulled up and offered us help.

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