Since ditching fossil fuels for our driving six year back, we are now on our third generation Renault Zoe with a 200+ mile range, which does for all our needs, and thanks to the Zappi charger and the Solar Panels our miles are mostly completely free.

But one thing we haven’t in all that time, is take the electric car abroad. Until last month, and a French holiday in La Rochelle, when instead of taking the train as usual, we decided to take the ferry from the beautiful wildlife haven of Poole Harbour and drive down. Queue a return to range anxiety and worries about using an unknown network!

How did we get on?

Well, no problem at all as it happens. Our experience was that, if anything, our French friends electric have it better than we do.

Certainly, the supermarkets and other charging spots we rocked up to, all seemed to have half a dozen or more chargers, when in the UK you might just get one or two, and those chargers would mostly all be fast at 120kW plus, when in the UK lots are still slow 7kW ones. And with lots of different apps to choose from, in English and often offering a discount on charging, navigating and using the network abroad is easy.

So, in fact, our French public charging experience was much better than taking a trip here in the UK. Bring on more European electric holidays!