oncearoundthegarrison-blog

[oncearoundthegarrison-blog]

London to Lundy Part 1

5 months sounds like a long time, but when you’ve started a new job in a completely different industry, it flies by. New colleagues, new commute, new schedule, new maze-like museum building that took at least a month to get used to. Even new vocabulary. 

I felt like I was desperately treading water, slowly drowning in a sea of to-dos. It finally took the Christmas period, when the museum was closed, most colleagues and external contacts had taken holidays and my telephone and inbox fell quiet, that I had a moment to realise... I have 13 days of annual leave to use up before the end of the financial year.

My husband’s birthday is in March, so I thought we could go somewhere together to celebrate, as we had been doing the last few years. The thing is, my husband works in a small company, a team of 3, in fact. Unfortunately, the other 2 also have their birthdays in March, so, being the most junior, he felt he couldn’t take a week off, especially because they were planning a work trip around that time too.

“You should go on a yoga retreat by yourself.” he suggested. As if I wanted to pay hundreds of pounds to go and spend days stretching with strangers, some of whom were guaranteed to be a little too ‘woo-woo’ for my taste (no offence). 

I decided I wanted to do something that was ‘worthwhile’ with my time. After hours researching expensive (and scammy) conservation holidays, scrolling through WorkAways and WWOOFing opportunities, I somehow landed on the jackpot; a National Trust working holiday on Lundy, a three mile long, half mile wide island off the coast of North Devon.

Having hastily signed up and gained a place, I set to work on the dreaded getting-there logistics. The first thing was already ticked off the list. The only way of getting from the Devon coast onto Lundy Island at that time of the year is by Helicopter. With that booked, I looked into getting from London to Devon and back. 

The autumn before, I had bought my first car. It’s a fully electric Nissan Leaf. Using it largely for the weekly shop and commuting to work (15 minutes if the traffic is nice, 1 hour if it’s the usual), it’s the perfect car for pootling around the city and suburbs, where an electric charger is always close to hand. We’d done the odd 2 hour drives, but the route planning, and adding 30 mins per charge stop, the anxiety of ‘what if the charger we are heading towards is out of order’ was quite stressful, so a solo drive down to Devon seemed a foolhardy concept.

But, the more I tried to arrange the public transport, the more complicated things got. First off, the nearest train station is 25 miles away, and you need to get on a bus for an hour even to get close to the helipad. Not only that but you had to get there by 10am latest, so unless you wanted to leave London at crazy o’clock, you had to arrive the night before and find accommodation. On top of that, on the way back, you have no idea what time your helicopter flight is. “Sometime between 11 and 3pm, and it depends on the weather, you could be delayed to later in the afternoon or even the next day!” So booking a train for the way back was a gamble. Driving to Devon in my electric car started to look like a more attractive, at least simpler, concept.

I’m not what you call a confident driver, and some past long distance drives had been very stressful. It’s hard for me to forget that I could kill myself or anyone else by making a silly mistake. And I make plenty of those in my everyday life. What if I don’t plan well and I run out of charge on my car? The prospect of driving alone, for four hours, which would probably include at least 4 charges, was terrifying. Also, if I want to arrive at the heliport at 9:30am, then I would need to leave at 5:30am, but add on 4 x 30 minute charges is 3:30am, and maybe I should add an extra hour in case I take the wrong turning or there is traffic or a diversion... well that’s crazy o’clock. So I decided to break up the journey by stopping off at my uncle’s in Bristol.

The week before setting off, I made sure to check and double check the route on the Zap-Map app, which shows you the locations of all the EV chargers. I read reviews of each charger, making sure it was used recently and recorded as having a successful charge. I made sure I knew the locations of at least 2 other chargers near the one I actually planned to charge at, in case that one was occupied or faulty. 

I wrote out the addresses of each charger, in case I lost my phone. I packed a portable power bank for my phone, in case it ran out of battery. I found out what numbers I need to call if I break down or run out of charge, or have an accident (yeah OK I should’ve known those already). Some chargers require you to start the charge using your mobile phone... but what if you didn’t have enough reception? I drove my husband crazy with my fretting and stressing. I made sure I had enough car snacks and a good playlist.

Then the day finally came. I left for Bristol around 9.00am. It was a bright sunny day and I left in high spirits, onto the M4. Forty minutes later, dirty black clouds appear and it starts to properly pour. The roads were not too busy but there was a ropey 15 minutes of very poor visibility, the spray from the other cars and lorries obscuring the road like a thick fog. My heart pumping, I was very glad to arrive at my first charge stop at a service station just after 10am.

There, I struck up a conversation with a fellow Nissan Leaf driver, and I asked him if he’d heard the rumour that you shouldn’t charge your car up to 100% on one of the rapid chargers (there are a few different charge speeds, you see). It’s something I was told by the customer services person when I rang up the helpline on a day a charger refused to stop charging (really reassuring). The man looked at me doubtingly and said that he hadn’t. When he left, I googled it and it really does seem to be the case that it damages your battery. I hope he looked it up later as well. I had a hot chocolate in the Starbucks, charged my phone and bought some gloves, as I forgot to pack mine. Feeling panicked about damaging the battery, I headed off at 82% charged.

Luckily, the closer I got to Bristol and my uncle’s flat, the lower the speed limit, the more traffic there was. I say lucky because driving in those circumstances uses up much less charge than going 70mph down the motorway. By 11:40 I have arrived at my final charge stop, a Bannatyne Health Club just round the corner from my final destination. I was even more happy to see that it was a simple plug in, tap your contactless card and charge jobby. You’d think that’s how all chargers are, but no. EV chargers are run by different providers, I have no less than 5 different apps on my phone plus a physical tap card, and there’s still some chargers where I have to spend ages registering on a website in order to start a charge. Mental.

I go into the health club and explain I’m not a member but would like to sit in the cafe while my car charges. I was a bit worried they would turn me away, but, just as my Zap-Map colleagues had reassured me, they asked me to sign in to a guest book and let me in. I order a tea and settle down for 20 minutes. In hindsight, during my journey to Devon and back, I think I spent almost the same amount of money on beverages and nibbles waiting for the car to charge as for the charge itself!

Anyway, all in all a smooth journey to Bristol, and I get to my uncle’s around 12:15, just in time for lunch. After a lovely afternoon taking in the sights of Bristol (managed to catch the excellent Wildlife Photography of The Year 2019 exhibition at M Shed, see below for the fun image of a shocked Himalayan marmot that won the Grand Title) and catching up with a friend over a quick drink in the evening, I go to bed early, ready for an early start in the morning.