During the summer we took our longest ever single trip in the ZOE, from our home in Northampton down to Brighton and back in a weekend. We went down for a gymnastics competition on the Saturday in which my daughter was taking part. After the event was over, we had a good time walking around the town on the Saturday and lazing on the beach on the Sunday.

We started out Friday evening. I had been at work in Milton Keynes as usual that day so by the time I got back to Northampton I was already 40 miles down on range. I therefore went home via the Northampton Rothersthorpe motorway services to top up at an Ecotricity rapid charger. I initially tried the northbound side but the chargepoint there was occupied by a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Instead I hopped over to the southbound side, and filled up without incident so getting home (about 10 miles further on) nearly full. I plugged in the ZOE while we packed to leave so it would be 100% full on leaving.

We left home a little before 8pm and headed down the M1. We pulled in at Toddington to recharge only to find the charge point broken. Not a major emergency, however, as we had had this occur before and knew what to do. I got permission from the service station manager and drove across the service road to the northbound side. There we plugged in, charged up and had some food.

We continued our journey down the M1 and then around the M25 to the new services at Cobham. There we had our second charge, after which we headed down the M23 towards Brighton. This was the longest leg of the journey and although we had just about enough charge to get to Brighton, I wasn’t confident that we could easily get a charge once we arrived. We therefore popped into the Pease Pottage services as we went past and just had a five minute top-up (enough for an extra 15 miles driving) while sitting in the car.

We needn’t have worried though, as we didn’t use the car much once we were in Brighton. It had comfortably enough charge to get us to the gymnastics venue and back. The competition went well, and my daughter was awarded a gold medal in her category.

After the event we spent Saturday afternoon walking along the promenade and around the town. On the Sunday we had a great time on the beach, and then it was time to head home.