Day 45 - To Carlow and Back Again? Yay!

Well, in the end I decided not to drive down up to Belfast in Pepé for two simple reasons - time and charge! Yesterday was a busy day for me. I had to go to Belfast, pick up the granny cord, come back home and then head on down to Carlow to stay with Paul's folks for the weekend. I knew Paul's mother wanted to see Pepé. I also knew that if I went up to Belfast, fast charged three times and came back home that I would be in no mood at all to drive down to Carlow, to say nothing or arriving in Carlow at a very late hour. So, instead Paul drove us up and back to Belfast in his car. This, as it turns out was a great idea. Not only did we make good time in our excursion to and from Belfast, but with the purchase of the granny cord, and Pepé all charged up, I was ready to leave the comfort zone of 70km from my house and take Pepé further than he had ever been before.

I was very cautious driving him down to Carlow, using Eco mode most of the way and keeping my speed down (although not particularly less than most other vehicles on the road). By the time I had reached Carlow I still had 57km left. That means I could easily have pushed Pepé a little harder on the motorway if I needed to. Then it was crunch time! I had the granny cord, Paul's parents had the outdoor socket and there was a spare bed for us for the night. I plugged in Pepé and he started to charge up immediately. Now I should mentoned that the granny cord is a 10amp cord versus my standard charging cable which is 16amps. In practical terms this means that charging on the granny cord is going to take longer. So, even though Pepé still had a third of his charge left, it did take 7 and a half hours to charge him up fully. But, long before the end of the night he was completely charged up. If we wished, we could have decided to go home there and then! But Paul's mother makes the BEST Sunday breakfast ever, so I insisted that we stay the night! The next day we headed home after dinner with not a car in the world. And just like that Pepé was ow capable of bringing me closer to the in-laws. I just hope the don't might me stealing some of their electricity every now and again!