An HGV driver from Granada came unstuck up in Navarra when he decided to trust his SatNav - he ended up wedged into a narrow street.

He had reached 18 kilometres along the road that leads from France to Pamplona at 11.00h on Wednesday the 30th. He was taking instruction from his SatNav that was leading him to Etuláin, which he later found out only had 27 inhabitants. As he entered the town, he realised his mistake but it was already too late – he had to go on.

Or at least he tried to, but on a very tight, street junction, he became wedged between two walls and remained there for 24 hours before his articulated lorry was extracted from its cork-in-a-bottle predicament.

Although he had done this run many times before he had never taken this particular route. On all his other runs he had a nightmare of roundabouts to tackle when he gets to Pamplona; hence his ill-placed trust on his SatNav.

Having said that, the SatNav doesn’t know that you’re driving an 18-wheeler, 16.5m-long juggernaut when it recommends a route!

Anyway, back to his predicament. A tow truck turned up within a couple of hours but took one look at the 12m-long trailer and thought, “no way!” So the lorry driver had to remain there all night. The locals however, weren’t upset about this recent addition to their village layout and even brought him coffee and were very understanding.

It was around noon on Thursday when the other tow truck’s big brother turned up in the form of a mobile crane,  rolled up its metaphorical sleeves, spat on its hands, and got on with it. And extract the lorry it did, without damaging the vehicle or any of the building where it had been wedged up against.

Moral of the story: when you switch on your SatNav, don’t switch off your common sense.

(News: Etuláin, Pamplona, Navarra)