Our car is a 7-year-old Astra Estate 1.7CDI now at 60,000 miles. I always run from 'tankful' to 'tankful', resetting the odometer to zero and checking the consumption each time. Living in a village with no shop, all my travel is essentially 'extra urban'. We normally record about 57mpg locally and 37mpg towing a 1,100kg caravan. Last Bank Holiday, we visited friends in Suffolk travelling on the A303, M3, M25 and A12 plus some on local roads - in all 595 miles from my pre-journey fill, of which about 400 were on motorways or dual carriageways. For economy, I restricted myself to about 60mph on the faster roads.

Back home, I went to the same supermarket pump and using the same procedure, i.e. stop filling after the second auto cut-out; it took just 42.5 litres giving me 63.7 mpg. (With a 52-litre tank, I could have done more than 700 miles). So much for some of your correspondents who complain that the manufacturers advertise over-optimistic figures.