Hay bales somewhere in France

We were up at 3.30am and managed to pack the car and leave by 4.20am. At the Eurotunnel crossing we checked Xena through pet passport control - all the documentation was fine and then we sat and had a coffee while Gavin charged the car to top up. This was going to be an adventure driving 700 miles using an electric car.

It was cool and windy all through France. Our next stop was just past Reims where we stopped to charge the car. We are used to the U.K. which has chargers and super chargers at nearly every garage and definitely at all motorway services, but in France they don’t have the same infrastructure as the U.K., very few motorway services have chargers, and if they do, they are not super chargers so it takes forever to charge up. Our next charging point as planned by the vehicle system was 14 km off the motorway at a little Auberge in the middle of nowhere that had a recognised Tesla charging station. We left the car on charge - a super charger can charge 500km in 1 hour - and took Xena for a walk. We had passed a field with many hay bales about 2km back, so we walked there so I could photograph it, it was a good walk that Xena benefitted from as did my back! It’s not a bad thing to be forced to stop the journey and have a break like this. Gavin was determined to do his bit to save the planet by doing this journey in an electric car so I suppose if it took longer, so be it.

As we neared Switzerland the weather improved, it became hot and sunny, the car temp recorded 35C. We had another short charge near Nancy and then a final charge near Dietikon in Switzerland. This last charging station was fantastic - 24 super chargers, a 24/7 lounge to wait while charging, all so efficient but then that is what you expect from the Swiss. When charging you can quickly reach 80% capacity, but that last 20% takes much longer so it made sense to charge more often and not to full capacity. It has been interesting crossing France and Switzerland in an electric car - France is very poor compared to the UK while Switzerland is very good, although their charging stations are more dedicated places rather than having charges at the motorway garages.

We finally arrived at about 9pm, it has been a long, long day but an easy journey with beautiful scenery all the way. France was full of fields of hay bales, sunflowers, and many other crops, it is very pretty in the summer.

Now we have unpacked and it is time to go to bed.