I agree, taking chances with fuel is of course a mugs game, and you feel bl**dy stupid when the engine quits in consequence, especially if you knew you were pushing your luck.
It is easy to make mistakes when something happens which you don’t expect no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are. I fly a twin with a couple of thousand hours and make a distinct habit of saying out loud reds, blues, three greens, physically touch and check, at two distinct points on the approach and yet on one occasion last year at my home airfield that I know really well nearly landed wheels up! This was because on the first approach there was a slow aircraft in front that I was catching and had to go around and made a early turn into the downwind leg. On the second approach there was an aircraft on the runway taking an eternity to make an exit and I had to go around again into an early turn downwind. I was now getting a bit fed up and on the third attempt as I turned onto final someone entered the runway for takeoff which should have been an immediate departure but then stopped on the runway. I slowed as much as possible and was so focused on flying the approach slowly to allow the takeoff and avoid another go around that I didn’t do my usual checks and only remembered when on short final, just in time.
You never stop learning.
I agree with most of the earlier posts. What happened is not that big a deal. I recall screwing up go arounds in the simulator when I should have known better.
Fuel is never an excuse though. My golden rule is that I never want a problem with weather or something else to combine with a fuel problem.
I strongly suggest, if you can, always carry full fuel. If you can’t take the most you can.
Sure, running out of fuel can be a nuisance, as every glider pilot will tell… 
Jason flies a five million dollar intercontinental rocket ship from one tarmac runway to another. That doesn’t mean ignore his good advice, but it may need to be adapted to suit our small underpowered aircraft when we’re just out for a local sightseeing flight or hopping over to a friend’s hayfield for a Saturday morning coffee, or practising a few pirouettes, wingovers and loops:
“Retiring” for the umpteenth time again last year, Dennis still blames himself for that little mishap, but a contributory factor was that some well-meaning pillock filled the Schweizer’s tanks to the brim for a ten minute display at high DA – and then couldn’t remove the excess fuel.
For our typical GA flights, loading all 6 hours of fuel into an Aquila, or all 9 hours that a Maule can carry, is seldom reasonable or prudent. Excess fuel is a fire hazard and saps performance. Carrying unnecessary fuel may well have killed as many airmen as failing to load enough.
That is how you will learn, nothing dramatic in what you did? but may I suggest “one thing wrong at any time”, too much and you will go behind it, irrespective of experience
On fuel, I remeber stretching it on a nice sunny day, while I managed to slot in, looking at the tanks there was no way to divert somewhere else or go-around, lessons learned: “you look stupid when you broadcast on A/G, for a straight in”, “there are zillions of factors that determine your fuel burn by a factor of +200%, even a fuel totaliser can go wrong as you get close to max range”, “if you have to divert for fuel, do it twice early as you think or have a cut-off point along the route”
On bouncing, it happens because you push the aircraft to land, don’t push it again it will not like it (just imagine nose gear is not there, on tailwheels it looks crazy to push the prop to the ground?), early bounces, just give time to settle or go-around, later you can “gun it” once or twice with power
Remember if you aim to spot land on a specific runway point (say land on numbers), your approach energy = speed/power will fully decide if you will bounce or hard land nothing to do with your “flare/landing/timing technique”…
Thank you all reading the long post and sharing your experiences. It seems the fuel aspect was not articulated well in my original post. Just to clarify, when started second leg, I thought it might be more interesting to refuel by landing else where, the original plan was to return to base and fuel was sufficient for the trip. This was decided on ground and I did some route planning, in hindsight I must admit it was probably not sufficient. Throughout the next sequence of events, I had fuel gauges in sight and always made sure that we were flying with fuller tank. Even after final landing the fuel gauges showed 1/4 each. The scare I got was while doing reflections and checking aircraft after final landing.
Nevertheless point taken about fuel burn, my disorientation, followed by everything else might have contributed to higher fuel burn rate. This was never in my mind but now it shall be there forever!!!
Learning times, thank you for the encouraging words.
I agree with JasonC on carrying full fuel whenever possible. On a trip earlier this year to Guernsey I departed with forecast weather within minima for an instrument approach but when I arrived it was covered in fog and both of my alternates were also fogged in so I had to turn around and fly back. If I had just carried enough fuel for the flight and a diversion I would have run out of fuel.
I think we’ve probably all been there
On the traffic pattern, do whatever is safest: a complaining letter is preferable to breaking the aeroplane or yourself. You did the best thing turning left.
Whilst very nice to fly, I think the A210 would benefit from a more powerful engine. Even with the variable pitch propeller, it doesn’t climb well, especially if the (laminar flow) wing is dirty or has lots of flies.
As the Aquila is low drag, putting the nose down really increases the speed, and with a small fuselage cross section slipping doesn’t really work. ‘Parachuting’ with the stick back and nose up works well, or go around earlier. You probably know all this already though.
The nose leg is known to be weak, especially on grass runways, so either this wasn’t too bad, or you were lucky 
Learn from it, and one day you’ll laugh about it
One last generic point:
If you make a heavy landing, ALWAYS DO A WALK AROUND AND CHECK FOR DAMAGE!
Many landings that do not go to plan are caused by less than perfect speed control. Too fast is bad as is too slow, for different reasons.
From Piper Cub to a big jet you have to fly the exact speeds required, not some made up “add a bit for luck” numbers, and as experience builds this becomes more and more automatic.
