In France in 2006 we had two punctures in the space of 24 hours. The first was on a Friday afternoon and we happened to be just a couple of hundred metres from a tyre place that had a spare tube in stock, which they fitted to our tyre and off went. The second was out in the wilds on the Saturday and so we used the spare. We happened across another tyre place later in the day and although they didn't have a spare inner tube they did give us a handful of tyre valves just in case.
Based on my experience that weekend, French tyre service technicians are a great bunch, they couldn't have been more friendly or helpful, and despite my frankly desperate attempts to pronouns 'pneu' correctly they didn't even snigger, though it would have been entirely understandable if they had
