The time is mid-March. Been away for a while, and somewhat manic with pesky stuff like getting married and such, so high time for another road trip!

This time, the destination is the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales, which should be just over 300 miles round trip. I’ve managed to get a home charger installed since the last (November) road trip I posted, so now able to follow my first rule of electric road tripping – starting off with a full charge 🙂 The install itself was a bit of a debacle – sparing the queasy reader the gory details, the exercise included  dealing with existing cabling too thin to carry a fast-charge load, an incorrect charging unit installed the first time, a few blown fuses, and repeated tripping of the circuit. It took a few weeks but we got there in the end…

Background
We’d bought a paper calendar early in the year to try to do some tactile travel planning – we chose a British National Parks calendar, and decided it would be a good idea to visit as many of them as possible this year. One Friday night in mid-March (there might have been wine involved) we decided to hit the first of them, Brecon Beacons in Wales that weekend.

Day 1 – getting there
The start on Saturday was slightly late (blame the wine) – we quickly booked the closest hotel to the park that had a charging point (and an all-important spa) – the Best Western Parkway Hotel in Cwmbran, and then we were off!

First charge was 60-something miles and an hour and a quarter away, at the Ecotricity point at the M4 motoway services in Leigh Delamere – a 43kW 63Amp rapid charge. If memory serves (and it usually does) there were also some 7kW 32A Mennekes Type 2 points as backup – but I stuck to the rapid chargers. The 45-ish minutes to charge to full was just about right for us to grab a quick late lunch and a pee-stop, before heading on.

No need for another stop, straight on to the hotel then, with a beautiful crossing of the Severn Bridge and a gorgeous sunset to follow.

Severn crossing

Welcome to Wales sunset

Arrived at the hotel in the last light of dusk, and easily found the ZeroNet charging point (from Zero Carbon World) out the front of the hotel. As with all chargers on this network, no RFID card is needed, simply plug in to charge. Worked a dandy! The charger was almost ICEd but my cable could reach from the next parking bay down – ace!

The rest of the very pleasant stay involved no activities relevant to the electric vehicle aficionado…

Day 2 – the park and journey back
Some quick pre-breakfast research the next morning revealed that the charging point options in and around Brecon Beacon park consisted of either ZeroNet sites within the park itself (an impressive 10 or 11 of them too!) or Chargemaster points installed at a number of Asdas south of the park (didn’t really look north, as we weren’t heading there).

Leaving the hotel fully charged the next morning meant our first stop at The Hall Farm in Llangenny was more exploratory than necessary. A beautiful rural location, one would hardly expect to find a charging station here!

Hall Farm barn

Charging at Hall Farm

The charger worked just fine, but as there was no need for a charge and there was a lot more of the park to see, we trekked on further west.

After a good 40-ish miles of meandering through the park, much of which was narrow, windy single-track roads, steep climbs and drops (all range-chewing), we started tending towards our next charge stop, another ZeroNet location, a National Trust workbase deep in the park. The plan was to leave the car charging while we did a bit of a hike through the beautiful surrounds.

It seemed this wasn’t exactly a tourist or oft-visited location (as “workbase” might imply) but we did eventually find it – and that’s where we hit upon a few snags…

Firstly, the workbase is at the end of a road denoted as “no vehicles” – ok, let’s respect that for a bit, and do an on-foot reccie (reconnaissance mission for the civilians out there) to check out the situ. We find the charge point easily enough – located prominently on the wall outside the building – but it’s behind a locked gate – so even if we did drive down the “no vehicles” road, there was no way of getting the car close enough for a charge. Doh! Guess it wasn’t a great idea visiting a workbase on a Sunday!

With limited range (but enough to reach some cunningly planned backup charge locations) we limped slowly out the park to gingerly make the 16 miles to Asda in Merthyr Tydfil, home to a Chargemaster/Polar charge point. This would put us firmly outside the park, and as I was now contending with an ever-hungrier wife, it was time to find some grub.

The Asda superstore was located in a predictably industrial area, with not much nearby. Most of the EV charging bays were ICEd, but thankfully a single glorious bay remained empty for us.

Asda ICEd

Charge started, it was off to feed the co-pilot.
I had never heard Asda’s in-house food acclaimed in the culinary circles, but as our only option in the industrial estate while we charged, now was as good a time as any to give it a try. It was 30 minutes before closing time, so pickings were slim, but adequate enough to sate the now-ravenous beast.

The Polar charger was a Chargemaster standard 7kW 32Amp, so a full charge was going to take over 3 hours – not a pleasant option. My general strategy on longer trips is to only charge enough to get to the next level-up charger – given that a rapid (43kW) charge is over 3 times faster than a fast (7kW) charge (no, don’t just divide kW), it is a huge time saving to just hop far enough to the next rapid charger.

For us, this was another Ecotricity spot at the Welcome Break near Cardiff, where a Starbucks coffee and cake was enough to get a full charge of the rapid charger there, and back on our way.

Another dusky crossing of the Severn Bridge, a last rapid charge at the Ecotricity point in Leigh Delamere, and we were home without further incident!

300-odd miles, 7 charging points, only one of which wasn’t usable – an 85% success ratio, and a big improvement over last time all things considered!

(this is quite a delayed post, covering a road trip in Nov 2013, languishing in draft-pyjamas for months now)

Alrighty then, time for a little tester road trip!

Nothing too arduous, a little 200 mile round trip with a sleep-over in between, just to get this party started… Also an opportunity to test out some of these different RFID cards for the various charger networks I had signed up to (so the route/stops favoured different charging networks).

The route was almost all motorway (M roads) so that wasn’t going to be awesome for range – the faster you drive the more energy you consume overcoming drag (air resistance) and since it is downright dangerous (and boring :/) toddling along at 40mph on the motorway I was going to be travelling at speeds that would murder range.

Still no charger at home (but that’s a long story and potentially a different post – when I eventually get it sorted!!) so started off on a paltry low battery. Off to the closest public charging station (on Chargemaster’s Polar network), located at a nearby posh restaurant and hotel, Raymond Blanc’s La Manoir. The ever-helpful suited-and-booted welcoming party come rushing out thinking I was an arriving guest – to my “errr, nope, sorry bud, we’re not checking in… just here to use your electric vehicle charging point.. where might that be ?”

Directed to the part of the carpark where he *thinks* it might be, and more helpful chaps in coat tails come milling around, all quite intrigued as no one had used their charging point *in the year* since it was installed. Fair enough, this spot is out in the sticks, let me be their first. The point is a Chargemaster 32Amp, pretty standard type I’d used before. Wave my RFID card at the thing and ….. nothing. Nada. Zip. Luto. A bit more waving and prodding and poking and still nothing. The group of helpful chaps had grown quite considerably by now, and eventually sensing this wasn’t going to get fixed with their politeness alone, I beat a hasty retreat.
Side Note: I see a few month’s later that Raymond Blanc himself bought a Tesla Model S – and he mentioned this long standing charger in his tweet outside La Manoir.

The next charging point (two actually, also 32Amp Chargemasters) were just off the M40, at the Oxford Belfry, part of a hotel chain. No worries, worked first time, and popped inside to hang in their lounge for a coffee and their wifi. Given that the battery was near empty, this was going to be a bit of a wait…

Hotel parking lot charging station

Status check : just over two hours after setting off from home then, we’ve covered 10.2 miles and finally charged to just about full. Not a great start! Which leads me to the First rule of electric road tripping: always start off fully charged.

The next leg was about 70ish miles (just about the expected Zoe range in winter), to a Best Western hotel which has a charger as part of the Zero Carbon World network (a charity for de-carbonisation), with a pit stop at a the Chalfront and Latimer train station car park with 12 (yes, twelve) charging points on the Source London network. As these are supposedly Rapid (33Amp+) chargers I was looking forward to some fast-charging action (first time testing on Source London net).

Eventually find the train station car park and the poorly lit out-the-way bank of charging points, plug in and pop off to a nearby Italian for dinner – expecting the fast charge to complete in under an hour – nice!

Source London fast charger

Now, Renault has a nifty little iPhone app that I could have been using to monitor the car’s charging progress while enjoying dinner – but at the time, I hadn’t got this to work yet (eventually needed me to go through a painstaking over-the-phone activation process with a very helpful Renault ZE team). Had I had said app operational, I would have found out very quickly that the car had stopped charging… instead, we enjoyed a very merry dinner joyous in the expectation that we would return to a fully charged Zoe. Alas, not so.

We get back to a dark, windy and (dare I say) somewhat spooky carpark to find we’d only picked up another percentage point or two of charge, nowhere near enough to get to our destination. Unsure of why, I reset the charge, and join my (by now very grumpy) co-pilot in the (very cold) car waiting to charge. We charge for a minute or three, and the charge cuts out again. Repeat, reset, wait, cut-out. Grumpy levels on the rise, I repeat the process enough times to eke out sufficient charge for the next leg, and we set off again. Source London first impression #fail.

We arrive at The Bell, Epping without incident. The ZCW charger there is located in the carpark to the rear, no RFID card needed, just plug in and it works. A nice change.
Into the hotel for some coffee and desert while we wait. Since there are no convenient chargers near/on the way to Stansted, I need to get enough charge here to make it to Stansted for the over-nighter, then back to a charger closer to the M25 the next morning en-route to Oxford.

Eventually complete the less-than-100-mile trip to Stansted in a very disappointing 7ish hours

The next morning I started out with a low charge (no option to charge at/near Stansted Hotel), meaning there would be wasted time charging early on the return.

Which brings me to the Second rule of electric road tripping: always charge while you sleep.

This time I was planning on trying another Source London rapid charger, at Loughton station inside the M25 – hoping that the dodgy experience the night before was just that station. Besides, a rapid (20-50kW) charge would get me to full in an hour, while the standard (7kW) chargers would take over three hours – an obvious choice. Finding the station and the charging points was easy, and I cruise in with just 11 miles of range left…

Loughton Source London

Plug in, start charging and a few minutes later I’m cut off – same situation as the previous night. Grrrrr…. getting a wee bit upset, I find that there is a Renault dealership in Enfield about 6 miles away, within driving range AND they have a charger. Ditch this Source London madness, and off I head. The charge at Renault was then enough to get me home, charged without issue so seemed like the problem was to do with the Source London charging points.

Thus forms the Third rule of electric road tripping : always plan a backup charge point within range of your primary charge destination.

It turns out that there might actually have been an issue with the specific type of rapid charger hardware used by the Source London network, and (in short) the charger would freak out at the upper boundary of the Zoe’s power draw, and cut the supply. This has since been rectified, and I’ve been able to successfully charge at a few Source London points (but not those exact ones again).

So, all things considered, not a great first go, but certainly some good experience and valuable lessons for next time! 3 working charge points of the total 6 tried – a pretty dismal 50% success ratio.