Well, that didn't go to plan!
Oct. 15th, 2022 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustShort version: the good news is, we are in Saint Malo. The bad new is, we have been having problems charging our new electric car, and it is taking a lot of time and energy trying to sort them out. Details under the cut, but to softe the blow, here's a nice positive picture of dawn over Saint Malo's Fort National this morning:
It is possible that I have not yet explained about having a new electric car - or rather, that I have, sort of, in a long post-in-progress which I have not yet published. Well, then, new electric car, tried it out with an overnight jaunt to East Yorkshire to see the puffins, and when that went well moved as fast as we could to grab some time in France before autumn changed to winter. We knew that an alectric car would need new ways of scheduling journeys, to allow for refuelling - and that's the one thing that did go according to plan: we allowed ourselves plenty of time, and we needed it all!
We left Leicester Forest East yesterday morning, having identified a charge point at Lidl on the outskirts of Coventry: but when we took it over from the previous user, we couldn't get it to work. The message was Connected, not charging.durham_rambler had more than once met with a refusal to connect, and assumed that the charge-point was faulty - but this one had been working a minute ago... We relocated across the way to a Morrisons, which also had charge-points, and a more relaxed permitted parking time, and had the same problem there, and then, briefly, a message that there was a system error and do not drive this car!
At this point we called out the AA, and spent much of the day waiting for him to turn up. May I say that if you are stranded waiting for breakdown services, there are worse places to be than Morrisons n the Coventry ring road? Good toilets, a choice of sandwiches and other refreshments, a seasonal Halloween display and something decorative suggesting a mosaic of Lady Godiva. Eventually the AA man turned up, checked the engine and said we could ignore the message, which had in any case vanished, and that there is a known fault with MG charging, there's a pin which should lock the cable in place but sometimes has to be persuaded. And he gave it a twist and a shove and persuaded it. Charging took as long as a celebratory coffee and bun in Morrisons café, and then we were off.
The road to Portsmouth ran through the most spectacular sunset. It started with a primrose wash over the sky, which separated into golden streaks around the setting sun. The rest of the sky was full of wispy clouds, like a giant pink feather boa, and it gradually faded until I thoight it was over. But just as we reached the port, I caught sight of where the sun had vanished, leaving a pool of crimson ...
The only excitement of the crossing was the point where we realised we didn't know how to turn off the car alarm,to stop it being set off during the crossing - but eventually we discovered that it doesn't have the motion sensors that cause that problem, so you can't turn them off. We disembarked this morning at dawn, and that was lovely. We went into the old city, and found a very pleasant breakfast...
Then, since we hadn't had time to charge the car before embarking, and since tomorrow is Sunday, we thought we'd better doo that now. We knew where there was a charge-point, and we found it eentually, and you know what's coming next: it wouldn't charge. No amount of twisting and shoving and persuading made any impact on it.
So we have invoked our breakdown / insurance cover, whose opening bid is that we should take it to the MG garage in Saint Malo on Monday morning. We have enough charge to do that, but none to spare for driving it about in the meanwhile. But there's nothing to stop us forgetting about it until then, and amusing ourselves wandering around Saint Malo. So that's what we'll try to do.
It is possible that I have not yet explained about having a new electric car - or rather, that I have, sort of, in a long post-in-progress which I have not yet published. Well, then, new electric car, tried it out with an overnight jaunt to East Yorkshire to see the puffins, and when that went well moved as fast as we could to grab some time in France before autumn changed to winter. We knew that an alectric car would need new ways of scheduling journeys, to allow for refuelling - and that's the one thing that did go according to plan: we allowed ourselves plenty of time, and we needed it all!
We left Leicester Forest East yesterday morning, having identified a charge point at Lidl on the outskirts of Coventry: but when we took it over from the previous user, we couldn't get it to work. The message was Connected, not charging.
durham_rambler had more than once met with a refusal to connect, and assumed that the charge-point was faulty - but this one had been working a minute ago... We relocated across the way to a Morrisons, which also had charge-points, and a more relaxed permitted parking time, and had the same problem there, and then, briefly, a message that there was a system error and do not drive this car! At this point we called out the AA, and spent much of the day waiting for him to turn up. May I say that if you are stranded waiting for breakdown services, there are worse places to be than Morrisons n the Coventry ring road? Good toilets, a choice of sandwiches and other refreshments, a seasonal Halloween display and something decorative suggesting a mosaic of Lady Godiva. Eventually the AA man turned up, checked the engine and said we could ignore the message, which had in any case vanished, and that there is a known fault with MG charging, there's a pin which should lock the cable in place but sometimes has to be persuaded. And he gave it a twist and a shove and persuaded it. Charging took as long as a celebratory coffee and bun in Morrisons café, and then we were off.
The road to Portsmouth ran through the most spectacular sunset. It started with a primrose wash over the sky, which separated into golden streaks around the setting sun. The rest of the sky was full of wispy clouds, like a giant pink feather boa, and it gradually faded until I thoight it was over. But just as we reached the port, I caught sight of where the sun had vanished, leaving a pool of crimson ...
The only excitement of the crossing was the point where we realised we didn't know how to turn off the car alarm,to stop it being set off during the crossing - but eventually we discovered that it doesn't have the motion sensors that cause that problem, so you can't turn them off. We disembarked this morning at dawn, and that was lovely. We went into the old city, and found a very pleasant breakfast...
Then, since we hadn't had time to charge the car before embarking, and since tomorrow is Sunday, we thought we'd better doo that now. We knew where there was a charge-point, and we found it eentually, and you know what's coming next: it wouldn't charge. No amount of twisting and shoving and persuading made any impact on it.
So we have invoked our breakdown / insurance cover, whose opening bid is that we should take it to the MG garage in Saint Malo on Monday morning. We have enough charge to do that, but none to spare for driving it about in the meanwhile. But there's nothing to stop us forgetting about it until then, and amusing ourselves wandering around Saint Malo. So that's what we'll try to do.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-16 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-16 03:55 pm (UTC)Let's see how composed I am after we find the MG garage in the morning! But, you know, we have insurance, we are very lucky not to be squeezed for cash, we'll be fine, even if not quite as fine as we'd intended. And managing to have fun meanwhile...