But they might be useful to someone else or to you if your preferred ones are out of action?
My main dislike of public charging is the design. Surely the charging stations/posts could have been made to mimic a petrol pump with the leads attached and concealed until the charger was unlocked. This would avoid a lot of the faffing about in the rain etc. with the present arrangement, reduce the weight carried in the car and the hassle of re-stowing a messy muddy cable!
Otherwise, I’m very happy and never did expect total perfection.

Excellent. The more I hear about Ecotricity the more I like them.
I don’t know whether the stations in Holland have tethered cables, but they look like the ultimate set-up. Almost worth a trip over to sample them!

There is an art/skill/technique to rolling thick electrical cable, especially in a way that doesn’t cause it to kink up. If you have a poor ‘kinking’ technique then the cable won’t last long. You have to let the cable lie in its natural way, and if there is any residual ‘twist’ then you have to put a reverse coil in, or take the coil you have made and rotate the whole coil by swapping hands you’re holding it in.

Our recent trip to Northampton turned into quite an adventure, but not a complete disaster, mainly due to my keenness to take Zoe to show my son and my foolhardiness in setting off at 17.30 in heavy rain and traffic and forgetting to pick up my phone with all my maps, numbers etc..
We reached Waitrose at Bury St Eds for a top up as recommended to find one post not working and the other ICE’d. The assistant we spoke to almost admitted they belonged staff and said we were the first electric car she had seen there.
She offered to get one moved but, I then realised that carrying the 5m charge cable about was worthwhile. By parking across the rear of the ICE cars I could connect up and start charging. If this inconvenienced the ICE car users, too bad. Sadly, both posts only offer two 3kW sockets which I had not seen before, but we topped up to around 52% and carried on to Cambridge.
I was heading for the Science Park, but turned off too early and got mixed up in the chaos of traffic in Cambridge so that by the time we reached the Park we were down to 16 miles having tried to find other chargers in the area without success, either premises closed or unable to find them in the dark. The Tom-Tom service provided is next to useless I think. It seems to give a general location only of a few sites, so we toured around the Park trying to find the two stations and eventually stopped in one of the car parks at around 21.30 down to around 10 miles. We rang AA help on my wife’s phone which was running low, like Zoe, but all they could offer was transport to a local charge point most of which we had already tried. They would not take us on to Northampton.
Suddenly a car pulled up behind trapping us in. It was site security staff, curious as to what we were up to. Having explained our predicament the guy said he had no knowledge of any stations on the site, but happily the staff in the security office did and we were escorted to one, not far from where we were! It was a Scource East/Chargemaster post offering 1 x 7kW and 1x 3kW socket.
I offered my CM card to it and the message came up “INVALID”! We were then then taken to the other post, but with the same result.
We had to be at my son’s Fri am to travel with him to watch the afternoon session of snooker at Alex’ Palace so it was now too late to get charged up and make it to his at a reasonable hour. So we rang him to suggest we get a taxi and abandon Zoe, but he said he would come and get us, which took him about an hour.
The security staff agreed we could leave Zoe on site and led us to a space where she could be monitored by the security cameras until we returned Sat am.
On Fri we rang the local Renault dealer to arrange a charge on Sat and were assured they had a “fast” charger and were told that they closed at 12.30.
My son was able to bring us back to collect Zoe and came with us to the Dealer. We arrived there about 10.30, only to be told that they only had a 3kW charger in the service workshop, the “faster” charger was on order. So we left there around 12.20 with 25% charge and headed for the Milton Rd Park & Ride site where according to our info charging was available, and it was! The same type of posts as at the Science Park, both working and unimpeded. I tried my CM card and SUCCESS, we were charging at 7kw at last. The P&R operator advised us that all the Cambridge P&R sites have this facility, available between 7.30 and 20.30.
We decided to leave Zoe and headed back to the SP and rang CM to find out why we could not use the posts there. The operator checked and told us the posts were only enabled for Source East cards, but should have been set up for CM as well which he could rectify. A few minutes later after a reboot both the posts were accepting my CM card and if you can find them, are available 24/7.
We were able then to travel to our son’s under our our own steam and re-charge using the charger we had had installed by CM.
We travelled home on the Mon stopping again at the P&R, left Zoe and went into Cambridge on the bus, having not been there for about 30 yrs, for a look round. Returned to a fully charged Zoe and headed for Ipswich.
The Little Chefs, north and southbound, at Newmarket show chargers and apparently many of their sites are equipped, but do not show up on many maps except for Zap-Map. We called in to check and they offered the same type of post which again would not accept my CM card, but could no doubt be activated. I have now received my SE card (£10/yr) so hopefully am now better equipped.
We arrived home safely, a little older, but very much wiser about distance travel and thanks to our son and the staff at the SP, the trip was not a complete disaster.
The snooker match we watched was Ronnie O’sullivan at his very best, where he thrashed Ricky Martin 6-0. He may be flawed in some areas, but he was impressive on the table that day.

As I said, wiser now and a good learning experience. Our son is in Earls Barton, the right side of Northampton for us, but I may check the Rotherscope site another time.
On our way back from the snooker in my son’s diesel we checked the Toddington North fast charger. The rain was torrential and the message on the m/c said A/C ccharging not available, breaker tripped!
Thanks for the offer and I would do the same for other owners. I see on another site EV users have set up a register of like-minded folk prepared to offer charging at their homes which could be useful in an emergency.
Thanks again for this website.