Trip to Cap Ferret

First time taking the folding bikes in the car for a 3 day end of summer trip to the Cap Ferret, south west of Bordeaux. All the stats, costs etc summarised.

15th of September. Good morning. It’s been raining, really rainy, rainy, rainy. Um, and we’re off to Cat Fere, which is um in the Bay Dark, which is 175 km south of here. So, we’re hoping for better weather. It should be actually. Uh, been to Bay Darkon before, but not to Cap Feray, which is apparently where all the rich and famous used to go in the 1960s. taken a couple of folding bikes with us and there’s loads and loads of cycle uh paths around there. Um and uh anyway, this is the first time I’ve charged to 100%. Uh actually, we did it last month, but it’s first time I’ve charged to 100% after we’ve been doing um quite a lot of local driving. So, just going to power up now and see what we got. Okay, so we’re shown 512 km without the AC on. Um, and we won’t need it on going down there today. It’s about 19°. Uh, 512 km. um far too optimistic cuz we’re about to go on to fast roads. But it just goes to show that uh after few weeks of driving around locally um the uh you know your average uh consumption gets better and uh so your your gum thinks you’re going to do more. Anyway, 512 km at 100%. [Music] So, we are back home after 3 days down at the catfare. Um, obviously I got it totally wrong on the distance. It’s about 225 km down there. Now, we’ve driven many many times to Bordeaux uh to the airport. Um but when you get to the west of the Bordeaux ring road, it’s like going into a different country. It’s endless pine forest. There’s hardly any habitation. Um and you know, you’ve got lakes and you’ve got about another 60 kilometers to get out to the Atlantic. And then you’ve got this absolutely enormous beach that runs for about 100 km uh from the from the catfare all the way up to the mouth of the Girand esturie which I believe is the biggest river eststerie in Europe. Um and uh really there’s no other way to get into that area of the country than to go around Bordeaux. So when you sort of look back east, you’re saying, “Oh, I’m kind of in in this space of forests and there’s the Arca Bay with lots of little beaches and oysters are the thing there. I mean, we even saw an oyster vending machine, would you believe? Uh where they’re just, you know, harvesting the oysters, uh boxing them up, and then selling them.” Story, we had a great time. uh say we took our bikes with us. First time we’ve ever done that. Uh we got a couple of little folding bikes. Um because in the forest around that Caparet region there are supposed to be about 250 kilometers of bike trails. And I was thinking these are going to be like dirt tracks through the woods or something, but no, they’re just tiny little narrow tarmac um spaces and everyone’s on their bikes. Most people are on electric bikes. Uh and we we’re just you know on these little uh uh you know folding bikes so everyone’s coming whizzing past us. But hey you know we we just wanted to poodle around and look at the place and and it’s absolutely wonderful way of seeing that area. Um the peninsula gets narrower and narrower as you go down and there’s all kinds of interesting places down there. There’s this church that was built in the 19th century by a French guy who spent a lot of time in Algeria. And it’s right by the sea. Uh it’s a beautiful building. Um and it’s a Catholic church, but it’s got sort of Islamic architecture and inscriptions all over it. So, it’s a real kind of interesting little piece of architecture, I guess. Um and yeah, you know, we had a great time. And we we did a lot of cycling and uh the only thing was that we although the beaches are wonderful, there’s warnings everywhere about Portuguese man of war and we saw these dead they they look like little plastic bottles, but you mustn’t touch them. They they really can give you a sting even after they’re dead. And I did have a jellyfish sting earlier this year um up in the Bondi. It wasn’t serious, thankfully. And apparently the Portuguese man of war are not jellyfish. They’re something else. I’m not expert on it. But because of global warming, they’re they’re moving further north and they were just all over the beaches. The other thing, the Atlantic coast there is just too dangerous to swim in. I mean, the waves are just huge and uh there’s all kinds of signs and apparently every year people die thinking they can get in the sea there. Beaches are wonderful, but it’s dangerous to swim. Anyway, so uh getting back to the car stuff, um we did 545 km while we were away and I say we left at 100%. Got down there uh at 56% having done 226 km and Mrs. Zero did a lot of the driving actually and you know because it was absolutely torrential rain um I guess that helped with the 13.6 6 kilwatt hours per 100 km going down uh which is 4.56 miles which you know for highway driving I mean we weren’t like creeping along or anything but we’re doing between sort of 90 and 110 depending on what the weather would allow and then when you get on the Bordeaux ring road it’s a bit stop start and till you get out of and away from Bordeaux and then it’s it’s it’s really nice flat roads just through these pine forest but um you you know, it is quite dangerous. You you get people taking liberties and speeding along there. So, you know, we just kept it at sort of 80 to 90 kilometers an hour. Um, and actually the little bit of driving we did around the uh uh around the cap area where there’s lots of 50 and even 30 limits. and we just went to places where we could park up and get the bikes out and go cycling around the cycle tracks because there’s loads of cycle tracks. So, you don’t need to compete with cars at all. The there’s cycle paths all through the forest and along the side of the villages and it’s it’s wonderful. Um but I I had one uh day where at the end of the day I was at 9.9 uh kilwatt hours per 100 km which is I don’t know what’s that about 6 and 1 half miles per kilowatt hour. So yeah um we did a bit of public charging down there um once when we were looking for restaurants and didn’t like what we saw and we plugged in um to a slow charger and we we were on it for just about an hour and a half while we were just strolling around the place. Um and uh we got about 5.7 kilwatt hours and then uh just before we came back, the evening before we came back went to Tesla um and plugged in there. I wanted to use is Vizia because they were advertising as a special offer 35 sims a kilowatt hour. So we went there. Uh we couldn’t get either of the charges to work. They’re supposed to work on charge map. So, I gave a pretty bad review on Chargemap that these things just aren’t working. And just across the road was Tesla. And you know, Tesla always works. So, we spent €13 and six on teams on charging and got 26 12 kW hours on board. So, it’s an average of uh 49 some teams. So yeah, we got back with uh 29% of the battery showing uh as remaining and 133 km. Um we didn’t we weren’t quite so efficient. I I drove all the way home. Uh it was brilliant sunshine. We had to have the AC on but still got 14.1 kw hours per 100 km which is uh what about about 4.4 miles kilowatt hour I think. Anyway, um so that’s just a little trip uh report there. Um uh car’s on about 128,000 kilometers now, I think. And it all seems to be working just fine. Anyway, thanks for watching. Until the next time.