14th November 2022

We were whisked to Portmeirion, the filming location for the TV series The Prisoner, by our stealthy electric car. We had a loo break at a service station on the M54, lovely industrial heritage steam hammer on display in the carpark, next to the Tesla charging station. We continued, stopping again at Oswestry to charge. Not strictly required, because the car was easily capable of getting to Portmeirion. I was unsure of the charging arrangements at our destination, we had not spotted them on a previous visit last year. At Owestry, R visited a charity shop, while I had a coffee at Costa. Back to the car and we set off for the rest of the journey. Not impressed by the charging speed of the InstaVolt in the carpark. It had been slow.

We arrived and checked in at Castell Deudraeth. The check-in was different to the previous years. Portmeirion had decided to try and make the village car free, asking us to check-in outside the village, then park in the residents’ car park, and have us and our luggage transferred by electric vehicle to our village room. This all went swimmingly well, and we were soon in our room. We stayed four nights in the Anchor 2 Suite.

I need not have worried about car charging. The residents’ car park had more than 8 chargers available. They were all 7KWHr chargers, the slow chargers were not an issue because we would only take 7 hours to charge, and we were here for 4 days.

The weather forecast for Portmeirion was dire, but other than a shower (see the rainbow pictures), there was clear sky for the four days.

Our suite was a couple of rooms, nice and warm. We brought some tonics and gin and had a pre-prandial drink before dinner at 7.00pm. One issue with the suite was the squeaky floorboards, our floorboards were not an issue to us, but must have been to the resident below. We were constantly reminded there was someone else above us, their floorboards were constantly squeaking.

We had an excellent meal in the hotel. There appear to be two evening menus. They switch the menu each night. Nice conversations with the two couples on either side of us.

After supper I took the opportunity to do some night-time photography of the village.