fuel Archives - Neil Turner's Blog

Unblogged September

September 29, 2026 by Neil Turner

A photo of the Flower Carpet in Centenary Square in Bradford

It’s been a year since I started doing these round-ups of things that haven’t warranted a full blog post at the end of each month. There’s a few things to talk about this month, which has once again been a busy one. Work has been busy as it’s the start of term, and we’ve had some time with family to mark Christine’s birthday.

Bradford Flower Carpet

Bradford may no longer be UK City of Culture, but that doesn’t mean that cultural events aren’t still happening in Bradford. On Friday, on my way into work, I had a quick peek at the flower carpet in Centenary Square, which was made up of over 300,000 flowers and put together by volunteers. Hence the photo above this blog post.

Sadly, as flowers don’t last forever, the carpet was dismantled yesterday. Quite how many more cultural events we’ll have in Bradford remains to be seen, as the local authority have redirected £400,000 of culture funding to re-opening a tip near Keighley.

Health update

Last month’s health update warranted a full blog post, but this time I’m just doing a couple of paragraphs. I did have another minor seizure this month, making it number four. Like the previous two, this happened at bedtime, whilst already in bed, and seemingly resulted in no ill effects apart from me having bitten my tongue. I had forgotten to take my Levetiracetam in the morning, so I’m putting it down to that. As a precaution, I have a strip of Levetiracetam in my work bag now, and so far there’s been no repeat.

I’ve had some more blood tests, following my Osteopenia diagnosis, and I’m now having weekly physiotherapy sessions along with additional exercises. My mobility continues to improve, but I still need assistance with showering, and some actions like getting dressed and putting a backpack on still have to be done in a rather ungraceful way.

Fuel prices

Although I’m not driving at the moment (and that latest seizure has reset the 12 month timer until I can drive again), I’m becoming increasingly glad that we ditched our diesel car for an electric one. As I write this, the price of basic diesel at our local petrol station has broken the £2 per litre mark – for Americans reading this, that’s more than $10 per gallon at current exchange rates. For premium diesel, which we were recommended to use every other time we refuelled, that’s now £2.16 per litre. A full tank would therefore cost close to £130.

Meanwhile, when we charge our electric car at home (which we do the majority of the time), our electricity prices are fixed at 24p per kWh until August 2027. And, we can use some of the energy from our solar panels and battery to lower this further, along with Weekend Happy Hours from our energy supplier. A full charge costs about £6 and offers around 150 miles of range, compared to over £100 for a full tank of diesel in our old car, which would give around 400 miles of range.

Of course, the fact that most lorries use diesel is going to have a knock-on effect with prices in shops, as delivery costs go up. So, the sooner we can get away from fossil fuels and switch to more sustainable sources of energy, the better.

Unblogged March

March 31, 2026 by Neil Turner

I quite like doing these little end-of-the-month round-ups. I used to do the occasional ‘miscellaneous’ things blog posts back when I used to blog regularly in the 2010s, but it’s good to make them a regular occurrence.

The Transpennine Route Upgrade

Our train to London departed from Leeds, and so to get there we took another train from Sowerby Bridge via Dewsbury. Whilst I commute to work in Bradford by train regularly, it’s been a while since I went the other way via Dewsbury, and so it was my first time seeing the work on the Transpennine Route Upgrade. This is a major upgrade of the North Transpennine Route from York and Leeds to Manchester and Liverpool, via Huddersfield. Overhead electric wires are being installed, to allow faster and greener electric trains to run, and additional tracks are being added from the west of Dewsbury to Huddersfield, to separate slow and fast trains.

One of the biggest pieces of work is the re-design of Thornhill Junction, which will see a new flyover built and a new bridge across the River Calder. When we went past, the bridge piers had been installed, ahead of the decking being built. This will allow fast trains from Leeds to cross over slower trains joining the line from Wakefield, and will see a replacement station at Ravensthorpe being built. All the stations on the line are getting accessibility improvements too – we saw the lift towers being installed at Batley station. It’s nice to see some major investment in transport in the north.

Fuel prices

I tend not to talk about international geopolitics on here, partly because I work in international student recruitment and so have to deal with it as part of my day job. However, the impact of the war in Iran on fuel prices has made us very glad that we have an electric car. We do the vast majority of our charging at home, and our electricity prices are fixed until August. Furthermore, our solar panels keep the costs down even more, and we’ve been lucky enough to have had some quite sunny days of late.

Our old car was a diesel, and diesel prices have shot up faster than petrol. Whilst fuel prices have yet to hit the highs of 2022, our local garage wants £1.82 per litre for standard diesel, and I’ve seen prices as high as £1.93 per litre at a motorway services.

I’m just hoping that everything calms down soon – not least for the innocent civilians in Iran and across the Middle East who are caught up in all of this. It’s all just so unnecessary.

Bolster Moor Farm Shop

On the recommendation of Paul Bigland, a railway photographer and fellow blogger who lives across the valley from us, we went to Bolster Moor Farm Shop earlier this month. It’s in the hills above Huddersfield, and offers a good selection of food. It does plenty of pre-prepared meals, and is well known for the quality of its pork pies, and for having a butchers counter that can (usually) offer more unusual cuts of meat.

We normally go to Robertshaw’s Farm Shop near Queensbury, which is larger and has a better fruit and vegetable range, and an outdoor area with farm animals. But, we were impressed by Bolster Moor, and will certainly pop back there from time to time.

La Porchetta Pollo Bar

On the Friday night in London, we had dinner at the La Porchetta Pollo Bar in Soho. It’s not a big restaurant, but it’s open from mid-afternoon until late and so ideal for a pre- or post-theatre meal. Whilst the prices are typical for London, the portion sizes are generous. It’s independently owned and run by an Italian family, and can trace its origins back to the 1950s. We went there with a friend from university who now works in London, and who recommended it to us.

Is it worth using premium car fuel?

April 28, 2024 by Neil Turner

An AI-generated image of a superhero using a petrol pump with premium fuel.

Regular readers will know that I’ve been having some car is s ues of late, which has seen it spending a lot of time in the garage being fixed. So far, it’s been running okay for the past couple of weeks, and so I’m very hopeful that there’ll be no more expensive repairs due for a while at least.

At its most recent garage visit, to have the particulate filter cleaned, the mechanic asked whether I was using supermarket fuel. Because, in his view, this was why I was having problems with the filter. Premium fuels – the ones that you pay extra for – have additives which claim to help clean out your car’s fuel line. As well as preventing the filters getting full, they should – in theory – boost efficiency and result in you getting more miles per gallon of fuel. Once the car was fixed, I was therefore advised to stick to premium diesel for a few months.

This was a topic that the excellent BBC Sliced Bread podcast covered back in January last year. There’s also some information from Auto Express and Which? (for which you may need a Which? subscription to read). The consensus seems to be that premium fuels can help keep a car running better, but they only need to be used occasionally. Supermarket fuel – or at least, supermarket petrol – should be fine to use most of the time. And it is generally cheaper than even the basic fuel from branded petrol stations.

As instructed by the mechanic, I filled up with Shell’s ‘V-Power’ premium diesel earlier in the week. You pay quite a bit more – it was £1.76 per litre, as opposed to £1.58 per litre for their standard diesel. For context, £1.53 per litre is the current cheapest price locally for diesel, according to PetrolPrices.com. My tank was low – the fuel warning light had come on – so I paid almost £100 for a full tank. This was £12.65 more than if I’d filled up with regular diesel at the cheapest nearby petrol station.

We’ll see if it makes a difference. Although my car does track its fuel usage in miles per gallon, it doesn’t use a moving weighted average and so it’s prone to fluctuations, making it a bit useless. My car is over 11 years old, and so anything to clean out the fuel lines and injectors is welcome.

I’ve also used some engine cleaner from Halfords; you put this in once your tank is below a quarter full (i.e. three quarters empty) and then take it for a decent drive until the fuel warning light comes on. It recommends that you use it around four times a year, and this may be a better option. Theoretically, it does the same job as the premium fuel, but costs £10-20 each time. Overall, that works out cheaper than paying more for premium fuel.

So, in honour of Betteridge’s law of headlines, the answer to the question ‘is it worth using premium car fuels?’ is probably no. You can use supermarket fuels, but maybe pop some engine cleaner in now and again – especially if you have an older car. Or go electric – I’m sure our next car will either be a plug-in hybrid or a fully battery electric vehicle.