I get up early and sort out breakfast, beverages and sandwiches for the journey, plus the usual box of donuts. We set off a little later than planned and make good progress.

We arrive at the Eurotunnel in Folkestone at 11 am and soon find ourselves in a queue. LeShuttle had emailed Gabi to say they’d made improvements. But this is definitely no better. Yet it gets even worse: when we finally reach the terminal, the large display board informs us that the waiting time is 3 hours. That explains the large number of cars and the long queue.

A member of staff tells us that the brake warning light suddenly came on for one of the trains. It then stopped at the tunnel exit and blocked the tracks. Train services have since resumed, but all passengers are now running late. So we plug LucY in as soon as a Supercharger becomes available. That way, we can at least make good use of the waiting time. Meanwhile, train letters are being displayed again, spread across two trains per hour. If this continues, our train won’t leave until 5:44 pm. Is that really the true? No, not at all, two different staff members assure us. They’ve brazenly lied to us. Had we known that earlier, we would have rebooked onto the car ferry. Now it’s too late for that.

FINALLY, the time has come. And we’re puzzled: the queuing lanes before the drive onto the platform are all full, even with cars from the previous two letter groups. So it wasn’t their turn yet? We end up being the last car to drive onto the train, just when we’d already given up hope.

By the time we arrive in France, everyone ahead of us has got off the train and we’re on the motorway, the clock reads 7.30 pm. We’ve lost an hour to the time difference, and we’ve still got a nine-hour journey ahead of us. That’s not good at all. LeShuttle has really let us down on this trip.

After a while, we stop counting the charging stops. There are four or five in the end, but at least they’re only brief. Each one is just long enough to pop to the loo or eat the last bits of our sandwiches. We keep ourselves awake on the journey with audio books: we manage to get through about 15 episodes of Cabin Pressure.

We make our final charging stop in Pratteln, just after the border with Switzerland. And we’re amazed to see that, at 3.30 am, there are around ten Teslas charging here, most with local number plates. Do their owners perhaps have trouble sleeping, or are they charging here on their way to or from a shift?

An hour later, we finally arrive home and collapse into bed, exhausted.