Driving to Cornwall

I regularly drive London to south Devon. I prefer A303 route as I have found it more reliable for chargers. I tend to take a short stop at Solstice Park services. Plenty of chargers. That may be an option on the way back. On the way to Looe as other people have said Exeter Services or Salmons Leap. It is better to charge when your battery is around 20 to 30 per cent so you get a faster charge for your money. Possibly charge at a lower SOC but I don’t often risk going too low.
 
Loveclose said:
A303 at Stonehenge is always a lottery traffic wise.....although I've yet to pass it in my electric vehicle!
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The beauty of an EV is that it uses very little electricity in a queue unlike the ICE cars that chop through the fuel (unless they have the A/C off and they have auto stop start available) so yer there may be a queue a Stonehenge but it will have limited impact on your range.
 
Tight Git said:
Launceston is 200 miles from Maidenhead and there is an open to all Tesla site there so you should be able to make that without too much problem. You will use a lot less electric by avoiding motorways and sticking to 60mph.

Keep an eye on remaining range on the car and distance to go on the sat nav and slow down a bit if it's getting tight!

I'm heading for Penzance in June from North Yorkshire in my SE SR so twice as far as yours. Wife's mother lives down the Altwood Road so I'm in Maidenhead frequently.
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Just watch out for the A30 roadworks, its basically dug up between Redruth and Penzance. There are Osprey and FastNed chargers in Camborne, but if you charge up at the open Tesla chargers in Linton you'll get an excellent price and should be able to get to Penzance and back to Linton on a single charge. Enjoy your trip.
 
In the end, we used the M4/M5broute 😁 I didn’t want to wait til the last moment, so instead of Cullompton, I nipped into Sedgemoor Services. The chargers there were all u/s except for one, and a guy was charging from 1% 😳 so was going to be hours. There were several very irate drivers around! Next stop was Bridgewater - just one charger, it praise be, it was free. Charged at 67kW, so just time for a coffee and toastie.

Heeding advice from others, I called into Exeter Services - wow! At least 20 double chargers, well-used but still plenty of spaces. On my return, we want to call in at Buckfast Abbey, so shall visit Salmon’s Leap and fill up there.

Our accommodation here has 4 Monta chargers, and we are charged just 30p/kWh. The app works well.

Cornwall has been great - our first time out of season, and it’s very quiet (but also, a lot of places are shut…) I’ve been trying out Waze, and I think it has a warped sense of humour, as it keeps taking me down tractor trails, rather than the adjacent A- or B-roads 🙄 Yesterday, in the middle of nowhere, I turned a corner and met a black MG4 coming the other way - as we eased our way past each other, we both wound down our windows, he said, ‘Nice choice!’ just as I said, ‘Good taste!’ 🤣
 
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keithab said:
If you are using the A303 there is a very nice farm shop called Teals just of the A303 at South Cadbury. When we called in last December they were preparing to install 10 fast chargers there. Not sure if they are operational yet, but it will make a nice stop along the way
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Teals isn't yet on ZapMAp but it'll be good when open and fill a bit of a gap on that part of the A303, although there are 2xInstas at Sparkford McDonalds, it's my unfounded prejudice that McD chargers will always be ICE'd.

Called on the 4xFastned in Andover and used the 4xOsprey Wincanton over the weekend, both are to be recommended - the A303 is at the zero planning required stage if you use it regularly.
 
On the way home, we called at Exeter Services - the chargers were busy, but there were plenty of spaces. We had about 30% in the battery, and ZapMap was suggesting we stopped at Leigh Delamare to top up. But having experienced out-of-use chargers on the way down, I thought it best to charge when I could, rather than when I had to. The charger started and stopped twice (and charged me 19p!) before starting properly. I got about 65K out of the charger, so we sat in the Services' lounge for 20 minutes, and left with a full-ish (90%) tank (the last 10% dropped to about 20k) which got me back home with some to spare (about 130 miles, Motorway all the way)

The only drawback with Exeter's otherwise excellent set-up is that all the exiting traffic is directed past the chargers, which makes reversing into the bays rather interesting...

After Exeter. the projected range started to drop dramatically (with me driving at 65-70 :rolleyes:), so we went into Membury, which had a grand total of 2 chargers! Of course, they were both occupied with a queue waiting – we decided to move on to Chievely, which I hate, but it has a lot of chargers. But we then hit roadworks, and then a horrible accident on the other carriageway, causing everyone to slow down, and suddenly the range shot up again. Forcing my right foot to lighten up, I stuck to 60mph and made it home with about 15% left in the tank.

Lots of lessons learned this week!
 
tonybridge said:
On the way home, we called at Exeter Services - the chargers were busy, but there were plenty of spaces. We had about 30% in the battery, and ZapMap was suggesting we stopped at Leigh Delamare to top up. But having experienced out-of-use chargers on the way down, I thought it best to charge when I could, rather than when I had to. The charger started and stopped twice (and charged me 19p!) before starting properly. I got about 65K out of the charger, so we sat in the Services' lounge for 20 minutes, and left with a full-ish (90%) tank (the last 10% dropped to about 20k) which got me back home with some to spare (about 130 miles, Motorway all the way)

The only drawback with Exeter's otherwise excellent set-up is that all the exiting traffic is directed past the chargers, which makes reversing into the bays rather interesting...

After Exeter. the projected range started to drop dramatically (with me driving at 65-70 :rolleyes:), so we went into Membury, which had a grand total of 2 chargers! Of course, they were both occupied with a queue waiting – we decided to move on to Chievely, which I hate, but it has a lot of chargers. But we then hit roadworks, and then a horrible accident on the other carriageway, causing everyone to slow down, and suddenly the range shot up again. Forcing my right foot to lighten up, I stuck to 60mph and made it home with about 15% left in the tank.

Lots of lessons learned this week!
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Well done, it's best to aim for the bigger sites with more than two chargers like Membury. You only have the more than N charger filter in ZapMap of you pay for premium but if you use ZM in conjunction with the Electroverse app, then the latter does have a similar filter for number of chargers, but interestingly never lists Gridserve sites!
When we returned to the Cornish border ourselves last Monday, we paid a flying visit to Moto Exeter, our first SE stop from West London, we were chatting to a Gridserve tech who said he was the only technician in the SW and his solo territory stretched from Lands End to Chieveley. Let's hope he keeps in good health!
 
DevonMG4 said:
Well done, it's best to aim for the bigger sites with more than two chargers like Membury. You only have the more than N charger filter in ZapMap of you pay for premium but if you use ZM in conjunction with the Electroverse app, then the latter does have a similar filter for number of chargers, but interestingly never lists Gridserve sites!
When we returned to the Cornish border ourselves last Monday, we paid a flying visit to Moto Exeter, our first SE stop from West London, we were chatting to a Gridserve tech who said he was the only technician in the SW and his solo territory stretched from Lands End to Chieveley. Let's hope he keeps in good health!
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Electroverse doesn’t list Gridserve as they are not linked with them and no discount to be had for Electroverse members .
 

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