Day 1: Dublin (Ireland) → Edinburgh (Scotland)

We left our home early – travelling under the city – via the Dublin Port Tunnel – to catch the 8am Irish Ferries Car Ferry from Dublin to Holyhead in Wales.

Plugging into the ferry to top off the battery so we leave with 100%. The 1 phase AC charger delivered a full 7.2kW supply – twice the amount that we got from the ferry on the way to France earlier in the year. With this being a shorter crossing, the additional power is appreciated. As ever, Irish Ferries are very organised with making sure you get a charge. If you book a EV Charger (free) when making your reservations you will get a charge on-board,

After a smooth crossing we arrived into the Port of Holyhead exactly on time.

With today being a "travelling day" and the longest of the trip – we start heading across Wales on the A5 and then the A55 with Edinburgh as our destination 515 km away.

Even though the UK drives on the left – same as Ireland – one significant difference became immediately apparent. The UK uses imperial measurements of miles per hour/MPG for speed and miles and yards for distances. So much of driving is about familiar patterns that it is surprisingly tricky to adjust.

I initially changed the units of the car from km/kmh to miles/mph – but while that matched the road signs I was seeing on the road – it actually increased my unfamiliarity. While I could adjust to the speed/miles per hour aspect relatively quickly, it was the mental model of distances that I struggled with. Having the range marked in miles or the navigation giving distances the same I found difficult to adjust to. I just couldn't instinctively "know" what a range of 138 miles was compared to kilometres or 300 yards vs the equivalent in meters.

So what I found worked best for me was to leave the car in the metric measurements I am so familiar with and just make the mental speed conversions as required between the KM/H I was seeing on my dashboard with the speed restrictions on any particular road.

The car showing the speed signs in local MPH on the dashboard helped a lot to make this manageable.

We had a two fast charging stop strategy today for our journey to Edinburgh. Neither were completely optimal in that they were located at places on-route where we would be arriving with much too high a state of charge (SOC) then we'd have preferred. We could probably have gotten away with a one stop strategy if there was a better located charging station mid-way on route but we couldn't find one when doing our route planning.

Our first stop was at MFG Crow Orchard – a new charging station at a BP garage with Costa Coffee attached. The eight chargers were all 150 kW with about 75% of them in use, including another Gentian Blue Taycan. I contactless Apple Pay with my iPhone to pay for the charger and get it started. It didn't seem to support any of the typical mobility providers (such as Chagemap, Shell Recharge or Porsche Charging Service).

As we arrived with the relatively high SOC of 44% – we started pulling around 120kW of power.

There was someone from the charging company there helping people make sure they could operate the chargers, seeing what kW they were getting and generally advocating for their solution – he mentioned they were working on decreasing the amount of time the chargers spent "communicating with the car" before power delivery started. It's great to see such commitment and enthusiasm and a good endorsement for MFG's commitment to providing a good and reliable experience.

One additional quirk of this location is that you had to go into the stop and type in your registration number into a kiosk/iPad device to prevent being giving a parking fine. I never had to do that at a charging bank before, not really sure what it was all about but it only took 10 seconds to do it.

We grabbed a coffee and rested up for a few minutes, leaving the station with a 96% battery.

We travelled north along the relatively quiet M6 for a few hundred uneventful kilometres until we crossed over the border into Scotland at Carlisle, reaching the IONITY stations at Gretna Green shortly afterwards. This was a busy station with all charing stalls occupied – it probably needs more than four charing stalls.

However, there was extremely good queuing discipline which both greatly speeded up the waiting process and also reduces the stress of having to ensure you won't be skipped. It is such a small thing but I was very impressed with everyone's behaviour – and have experienced much worse in some parts of Continental Europe.

We only needed a small amount of power to safely reach our hotel in Edinburgh – charging for 12 minutes – enough time for a comfort break.

We left the motorway for the final hours drive into Edinburgh in complete darkness. The combination of matrix lights, night vision and adaptive cruise control making driving unfamiliar roads safely a breeze.

One standout observation with my first day's driving in the UK is the excellent lane discipline of the local drivers – keeping left,, leaving overtaking lanes clear, making good progress where possible and moving out to let cars merge. It really is very impressive and I think you can see it in the impeccable safety statistics of UK roads. Generally speaking, Irish drivers are usually relatively well behaved but this was on another level.

We arrived into a relatively quiet Edinburgh within 15 minutes of our estimated arrival time and quickly found parking and destination charging beside a yellow Lamborghini at our hotel – Radisson Blu Hotel.

The Lamborghini plugged into a UK 3-pin socket to trickle charge their 12-volt battery. Not sure what that says about its overnight power drain!

It was nice to be able to get a drink after 20.00 – the time hospitality has to shut in Ireland due to pandemic regulations.

The days charging stats:

Location	Start SOC %	End SOC %	kWh added	Cost	Duration	Ambient Temp	Battery Temp	Charger Type	Network
MFG Crow Orchard	44%	96%	47.3	€17	38 mins	9C	31C	DC 150kW	MFG
Gretna Green	44%	70%	21.6	GBP£ 6.48	12 mins	6C	35C	AC 350kW	IONITY
Radisson Blu Hotel	29%	100%	59	€0	7 hours	4.5C	31C	AC 7kW	None

Today we did 520km over 7:46 hours, with an average speed of 68km/h, consuming 24.1 kWh/100km.