weston-super-mare Archives

March 30, 2025March 31, 2025

Ouch, down to 1%

I hadn’t planned on getting down to a 1% charge, but that happened to me recently.

I had done a day trip to Dunkerque and had arrived back on the ferry at Dover with a roughly 50% charge left on the car. I had used more battery power than anticipated, as I had managed to get an easier ferry to Calais, but then during the day I had to travel from Calais to Dunkerque, only a 25 mile trip, but it was an unplanned trip. I also did think I might be able to charge at one of the French supermarkets I stopped at, but didn’t see any chargers. Well, I wasn’t really looking hard, but if there was one I would have probably put some charge on the Funky Cat.

I had to drive from Dover to Weston-super-Mare, a total distance of 215 miles. The Funky Cat has a maximum (published) range of 193, though when I recently charged to 100% I had a maximum range of 176. If I started off with 100% I could have done the trip with a single stop for a charge. Now if I wasn’t worried I could have stopped off anywhere at the services, paid 85p kWh and charged up there, but I wanted to save some money.

Having arrived back quite late, I knew I could take advantage of Instavolt’s off peak rates. I couldn’t use the Tesla chargers at the Channel Tunnel as they are only for people getting on or getting off the trains on the Channel Tunnel. So I headed down the M20 to the Instavolt chargers at Ashford. These chargers are near The Ashford Cattle Market, as a result after putting the Funky Cat on charge I stayed in the car.

It cost 54p kWh which is much cheaper than their standard 85p. A couple of days before I had used an Instavolt charger at the peak rates. For roughly the same amount of money, during peak charging I got 15.33 kWh, whilst off peak I got 25.18 kWh. Quite a substantial saving.

I didn’t charge to 100% as it takes quite a long time, especially that last 20%. So knowing there was 100 miles to the Tesla chargers on the M4 westbound services at Reading, I made sure I had at least a 125 mile range. I then set off.

However there is where all best laid plans started to go amiss. I found out via Waze that the M25 was closed between junctions 9 and 10. This meant I missed the Cobham Services, but did mean that I saved some power, as I find A road driving is more energy efficient then motorway driving. I also saw that the M4 was closed, which I saw was between J10 and J11.

So I wasn’t too worried. Waze took me down the M3 and through Bracknell and Wokingham. I’ve done this route before, so wasn’t too worried and assumed that this was also avoiding where the M4 was closed. However as I approached the M4 junction with the A329(M) the slip road onto the M4 was closed. This probably meant that the M4 was closed around the services as well. Time for a plan B. I asked Ora for the nearest charging station and saw that there was a bank of Tesla chargers at Wokingham.

I arrived at the Wokingham stalls, and noted on the app they were compatible to non-Tesla chargers, and the rate at that time was 41p kWh. Great I thought, however these were the older model chargers and I have had issues with these in the past. It was going to be a similar story, despite plugging in, I couldn’t get the Funky Cat to initialise a charge with the Tesla charger. I was now getting quite low on power. So after driving through Reading, I once more asked Ora for the nearest charger, and I ended up at a Shell Garage on Basingstoke Road. I put the Funky Cat on charge which was going to cost 85p a kWh a lot more than I was expecting to pay and compared to the Tesla costs.

As I sat in the car (again) I checked the maps and I did think from what I could read that the M4 was open from J11.

So I did a minimal charge and set off, however at the junction the slip road was closed off. I headed off through the diversion and joined the M4 at J12. I decided I would stop at one of the services on the M4, and just do a charge there. I approached Chieveley Services, I saw I still had enough range to get to Membury Services. I had had issues before at Chieveley Services, so decided I would go to Membury.

As I approached Membury Services, my range got lower and lower, until it went to zero. My heart rate started to increase and I slowed down. I got to Membury Services and checked the car I had 1% charge left. There are a bank of Tesla chargers at Membury Services, however they don’t work with non-Tesla cars. So I had to use the Gridserve chargers.

I had to recreate my account with them to use the app, so I could get the lower rate of 79p kWh. I put on enough charge to get me home and then some.

Even so, when I got home I had 6% left of charge.

It had been a frustrating trip, but I rarely do something like this, so though annoying, the Funky Cat is still a great drive. I had to remember that it was mainly frustrating as I was trying to save money on charging and keep my driving costs down.

August 9, 2023October 22, 2023

Also not working

When I was considering an electric vehicle, I was concerned about where I could charge the car. Having failed to use the chargers at Queensway in Worle, I had seen that there electric charging points in the Carlton Street Car Park in Weston-super-Mare.

You can imagine my disappointment when I headed into town to to park at the Carlton Street Car Park and use their charging stations and they weren’t operational. There was no indication why they weren’t working, and no information on if and when they would be operational again.

So, I drove round to Tesco and parked in their car park instead.

May 28, 2021

Digging up the streets

Long time followers of this blog may recall the long and winding story of my journey to a full fibre connection here in Weston Village in Weston-super-Mare.

Having moved from dial-up to an ADSL connection I was well pleased in 2010 when our local exchange was upgraded to FTTC and we could get a fibre connection.

Having moved house in 2012, literally just down the road, we lost FTTC and had to return to ADSL as the (different) cabinet we had been connected to wasn’t enabled for FTTC.

Five long years later we finally saw cabinet 25 getting the upgrade it needed and I could finally return to the fast speeds of FTTC.

Jump forward three years and following further work by BT Openreach I was able to upgrade to FTTP or as it was called Full Fibre resulting in a download speed of 1Gb/s, which was faster than the 30Mb/s I had with FTTC and significantly faster than the 1.3Mb/s ADSL connection we had when we first moved in.

I did think that was the end of the saga, well it was the end of the saga for me, the reality for Weston Village is that there is now a bundle of companies putting in fibre and cable connection. As a result there is a huge amount of roadworks and cable laying across the village.

This is as you might imagine making a mess of the roads and pavements.

So I am now also getting bombarded with pamphlets and advertising new fibre and television services.

Will I change, no, happy with the reliability and speed of my current connection.

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020

It’s both the end and the beginning

I have placed an order for fibre to the premises FTTP with estimated speeds of 900Mb/s down and 110Mb/s up. Should be up and running in the next couple of weeks.

A few months back our local area was awash with BT Openreach vans.

So we have FIVE BT openreach vans within 20 metres of our house and loads of BT workers as well. No idea what they are up to, I would go and ask, however a) social distancing and all that and b) they may, if I went up to them, think I was of those 5G conspiracy nutters!

— James Clay (@jamesclay) May 6, 2020

I did wonder if they were installing full fibre connections, or fibre to the premises FTTP. I remember at the time doing a search, but no news on any kind of upgrade to either cabinet 25 or the Worle Exchange.

Bizarrely enough it was an advert on Instagram that caught my attention back on the 1st October. Almost for a joke I decided to see if I could get faster fibre, I wasn’t expecting to, but was quite surprised to see that I could in fact have FTTP!

Having suffered poor ADSL speeds for many years, I was really pleased, in September 2017 when BT Openreach finally finished the upgrade to cabinet 25 and we could have FTTC fibre.

With roughly 30Mb/s download and 9Mb/s upload speed I felt I was back, in terms of internet speeds, where I was in 2012 at our old house before we moved. Eight years ago I blogged about how I lost my FTTC connection having moved house (literally just moved down the same road).

It took over five years for BT Openreach to upgrade Cabinet 25 so we could have FTTC.

One of the reasons I didn’t place an order straight away was that, if I ordered BT Full Fibre I would have to close my current internet account with my ISP. Now I have been with my ISP since 1998, they were my first ISP, well the first I paid for after a free trial with AOL. I had seen an advert in a computing magazine, they were called Force9 and were based in Sheffield.

I had a dial-up internet account with them initially where I paid a monthly fee for internet access as well as any telephone charges.

Stayed with them when I moved house. In June 2000, the Force9 brand was changed to Plusnet. This coincided with the introduction of the Surftime dialup internet products, the first real 24/7 unmetered dial-up service in the UK. This worked really well with the Airport Extreme base station I had with integrated modem. I could use my Mac to enable the connection and then use the wifi across the home to use the internet wherever I was in the house.

When ADSL was enabled in February 2003, I upgraded to this new faster internet. The always on nature of ADSL changed how I used the internet, and in some ways how the internet used me.

Plusnet was sold to BT in 2007 and I think it lost a little of its soul that day, but I stuck with them.

On this day in 2010 I upgraded to FTTC and this was a real revelation. With 40Mb down and 10Mb up this is significantly faster than the 1.3 down and 0.6 up I had before.

I was so disappointed when we moved house two years later and lost it and went back to the slow speeds of ADSL.

Five years later, cabinet 25 was upgraded and we had fibre back.

All that time I was with Force9 or Plusnet as they like to be called.

When I found out I could have FTTP from BT, I did think I should be able to get FTTP from Plusnet as I recalled they were doing FTTP trials a few years back. Alas it was apparent that they don’t do FTTP products. So it was with a little sadness (don’t know why) that I ordered the BT Full Fibre product and this automatically activated the cancellation of my account with Plusnet.

It’s the end of one era and the start of another.

January 3, 2018

Tech Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

Over the last twelve months I have published 26 posts, many of these were about my return to fibre. So it is nice to see that the tenth most popular post on the blog this year was from nearly a year ago. We will have fibre in “12 months”! I said back then that according to BT Openreach we would have fibre within twelve months, I was slightly sceptical, but nine months after publishing that post I did get fibre.

The ninth post was about when my iMac Fusion Drive Failed and had to have it replaced.

The post at number eight was another post about my fibre journey, Still checking… was when the cabinet was activated, but alas wasn’t accepting orders.

The seventh post was from 2012 when my HP Photosmart printer died. My printer is dead! was a sorry tale about how replacing the ink cartridges on the HP B110a resulted it in destroying the print head.

The post at six was about Dusting off the Pogo my old Polaroid Bluetooth pocket printer. Still going strong.

The fifth post was how I don’t like BT FON which was originally published in 2011.

The post at number four was wondering Where are my Comic Life Styles? I found them.

The third most popular post was about the free wifi (or lack of) on my holiday, Haven no wifi

The post at number two was Comic Book Fonts which was about the amazing comic book fonts from Comic Book Fonts.

So the most popular post on the blog was my post about QR codes on chocolate bars, Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling was published in 2015 and was one of many posts I published on the use of QR codes back then.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

September 20, 2017

Finally…

network cable

Well if you have been following my sorry saga of Cabinet 25 in Weston Village and it’s journey to fibre, you will be pleased, sorry relieved, that I finally have fibre. Five years after moving house my broadband is now FTTC and much faster than the 1.4Mb/s ADSL speeds I have had over that time. It’s being seven years since the Worle Exchange was upgraded for FTTC, but as with any FTTC enabled Exchange, you can only upgrade to fibre (FTTC) once the cabinet has been enabled.

I had been given an activation date of the 19th September. I had seen BT Openreach vans there that morning (they had been there the day before) so had reasonable expectations that the activation date wouldn’t be missed.

The only timing I had been given was that it would be completed by midnight, but I did wonder if it would be finished earlier, I just couldn’t see BT Openreach being there in the dark.

Mid afternoon my ADSL connection stopped. I did restart the router/modem but no connection. An hour later the modem went blue, I had a fibre connection.

It takes time for the connection to settle down, but I am pleased with a 25Mb/s download speed and it was nice to see how a 1GB software update which would have taken up to eight hours, take just eight minutes! The upload speed is slower than I would like at 2Mb/s but that’s still five times faster than what I had before.

Later it was nice to be able to be downloading an iOS update whilst streaming BBC iPlayer at the same time and browsing the web.

So I now have fibre.

September 15, 2017

Still waiting…

BT Openreach Faceplate

Okay so maybe being a little impatient, but I am still waiting on my fibre connection to be enabled.

BT Openreach finally enabled the cabinet on the 30th August and I placed my order with Plusnet the next day.

In my initial correspondence with Plusnet they seemed to imply that my connection would be upgraded on the 7th September.

However as with others I have since found out that my connection would be enabled on the 19th September. No actual time, but sometime during the day.

What I was confused with, was when I got FTTC at my old place, we had to have a visit from a BT Engineer who fitted a new faceplate to the master socket. So I was expecting to have some kind of appointment to have a faceplate installed. Talking to Plusnet customer service I have realised that as the predicted speed is low then I won’t need to have a new faceplate and “filters will work just fine”.

It was back in 2014 when BT decided that for up to 38MBps fibre connections that this could be a self-install option and therefore no faceplate needed to be fitted.

However some sites are recommending that you fit a faceplate anyhow.

We urge anyone considering or opting for a self-install fibre broadband service to install a faceplate filter. These are inexpensive and will generally deliver significant improvements in broadband speeds.

So I have been thinking that once I have the upgraded connection to fit my own faceplate. You can get them quite cheaply on Amazon.

So not long now and really fast speeds…

Well maybe just fast speeds…

Well faster than 1Mb/s at least!

August 30, 2017

The cabinet is enabled…

Originally BT Openreach said they would upgrade Cabinet 25 in Weston Village by the end of March, this deadline was quickly moved to the end of August. If you have been following my saga you will know that the final phase has been dragging.

Today, the 30th August, one day before the BT Openreach deadline, they have finished the process and are accepting orders for FTTC connections.

I had checked earlier today and as for most of the last month the websites were saying, still checking stuff and no you can’t order a fibre connection today. This evening that has all changed and I could now place an order for a FTTC connection.

The speeds compared to my previous fibre connection are not as good.